Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho
Raspberry Butte Lookout
Clearwater NF pole lookout built 1934 (50 ft, L-4 cab), abandoned 1945; listed as gone. Hike-in site; no source describes remains.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1945; the Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone; no structure described
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?
- No, you have to hike
- Trail
- Hike-in per Idaho Fire Lookouts
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a tower50 ft pole tower with L-4 cab; patrol point 75 ft pole tower with L-6 cab half a mile westThe designs: L-4, L-6
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 50 ft (15.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Clearwater National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Clearwater County, Idaho
- Coordinates
- 46.59826, −115.13105
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-id-raspberry-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 its recorded height.
Downloads about 3.7 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
- 1934 Built50 ft pole tower with L-4 cab; the patrol point tower to the west is undated in the sourcesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
- 1945 AbandonedAbandoned; all three detailed sources give 1945Sources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, fs.usda.gov
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Raspberry Butte stands at 6,374 feet in the Clearwater National Forest, about 10 miles southeast of Kelly Creek Ranger Station in Clearwater County.1,2 A 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab went up there in 1934.1,3,2 The forest's own list gives the same tower and the same 1934 date, but it draws partly on Rex Kamstra's firelookout.com site, so it is not a fully separate check.1,2 Half a mile west, a patrol point carried a taller 75-foot pole tower with an L-6 cab.1,3 The lookout was abandoned in 1945, a date that three sources agree on.1,3,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association now lists the site as a tower that is gone.4 Idaho Fire Lookouts calls the site hike-in, so a visit means walking in.3 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the summit, or whether the public may go there.1,3,2
- Raspberry Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/raspberrybutte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts, USDA Forest Service, Clearwater National Forest, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259185 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Raspberry Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/raspberry-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- Idaho Fire Lookouts (idahofirelookouts.com) (opens another site) 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, visiting details, 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
- Clearwater National Forest Lookouts (USDA Forest Service, Clearwater National Forest) (opens another site)
- FFLA Idaho lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Raspberry Butte on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Raspberry Butte Lookout on idahofirelookouts.com (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.