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Fire lookout · Idaho County, Idaho

Quartzite Butte Lookout

Frame cupola cabin built in 1930 on Quartzite Butte, abandoned in the 1940s and now listed as gone; sources describe the cab type differently.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in the 1940s; no source describes remains

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabFrame cupola cabin (firelookout.com, Idaho Fire Lookouts); L-4 cab (Forest Service list)The designs: L-4, Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Nez Perce National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Idaho County, Idaho
Coordinates
45.51748, −115.74628
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-quartzite-butte

View from the cab

What the lookout saw from its cab: every ridge out to about 93 miles, the named peaks in sight, and other fire lookouts within view, worked out from terrain data in your browser.

This lookout is gone. The view is reconstructed from its recorded site and a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 3.6 MB of terrain data the first time.

Or see what it could see on the map: the ground in its line of sight.

History

Then and now

  1. 1929 StaffedTed Oliver and Ron Norwood listed under a 1929 heading; year-to-name pairing unclearSource: idahofirelookouts.com
  2. 1930 BuiltFrame cupola cabin per firelookout.com and Idaho Fire Lookouts; the Forest Service list gives an L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
  3. 1940 AbandonedAbandoned in the 1940s; sources give only the decade, so 1940 stands in for itSources: firelookout.com, fs.usda.gov, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

Old maps of this spot

USGS topographic maps from the years a lookout stood may show it, often as a small symbol labelled “Lookout”. See the old topo maps around it on the Firefinder map, or find every scanned sheet of this spot on USGS TopoView (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Quartzite Butte, in the Nez Perce National Forest, was a frame cupola cabin built in 1930.1,2,3,4 The Forest Service's Nez Perce list calls the cab an L-4 cab instead, so the sources describe its type differently.3

Idaho Fire Lookouts lists Ted Oliver and Ron Norwood as known staff, under a heading that reads 1929.2 That heading falls a year before the 1930 build date, and the listing does not pair the names with years, so the staffing dates are unclear.

The cab was abandoned in the 1940s.1,4 The Forest Service list gives abandonment as its fate too.3 Firelookout.com and the Forest Fire Lookout Association both list the site as gone, and the association marks it as a ground site.1,5

No source describes what remains at the butte today, or whether the site can be reached.

  1. Quartzite Butte Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/quartzitebutte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Quartzite Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/selway-region/quartzite-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Nez Perce National Forest Lookouts, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259204 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho County (M-w), Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/idaho-county-m-w.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Sources

  1. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  2. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: links firelookout.com · No licence stated on the site; facts only (coordinates, elevation, built/destroyed years, design, agency). Photos mirrored with the site's stated credit. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  3. Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) Gave us: links idahofirelookouts.com · No licence stated; facts only (coordinates, status/built/destroyed year parsed from each entry's short excerpt). Thumbnail photos mirrored with credit per the project's photo policy. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, dates, links, fact-check Firefinder research (sources cited in the story footnotes) · Our own research notes; each fact cites its source in the lookout's story

More about this lookout elsewhere

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.