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Fire lookout · Clearwater County, Idaho

Whiskey Butte Lookout

Clearwater County, ID: 100-ft pole tower with L-6 cab (1931 or 1933); steel tower 1947-48; steel tower moved to a Pierce museum in 1999 per two lookout pages; index still says gone.

Moved: The structure was moved. The map shows where it stands now; the timeline says where it came from. Steel tower removed in 1999 and moved to a museum in Pierce; no source says it is on display today

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go. No source names the owner of the butte or gives visiting rules; a Pierce visitor guide lists a museum with seasonal hours

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Yes, you can drive up
Trail
Idaho Fire Lookouts labels the site drive-up
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Moved
Type
Cab on a tower100-foot pole tower with L-6 cab and ground cabin (original); later 86-foot Army surplus steel towerThe design: L-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
100 ft (30.5 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protective Association
Land
Unknown
Location
Clearwater County, Idaho
Coordinates
46.58181, −115.97882
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-id-whiskey-butte

View from the cab

What you see from the 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.

The structure was moved. This view is from the position Firefinder shows for this record, at its recorded height.

Downloads about 3.5 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. 1931 BuiltFirst tower dated 1931 by the 1947 Clearwater association annual report; lookout lists say 1933Source: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1933 Built100-foot pole tower with L-6 cab and ground cabin, per two lookout pages and the Forest Lookouts timelineSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com, idaholookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1939 EventRoad extension of about two and a half miles toward the lookout reported in the Lewiston Morning Tribune, January 25, 1939; expected to reach it the next yearSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1947 Replaced by a new structureTwo of the association's oldest wooden lookouts replaced by steel towers made from war surplus, Whiskey Butte's 1931 tower among them; annual report gives 75 feetSource: idaholookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1948 Replaced by a new structure86-foot Army surplus steel tower built, per two lookout pagesSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  6. No record between 1948 and 1999
  7. 1999 MovedSteel tower removed and moved to a museum in PierceSources: firelookout.com, idahofirelookouts.com
  8. TodayMovedThe structure was moved. The map shows where it stands now; the timeline says where it came from. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

Whiskey Butte Lookout stood in Clearwater County, Idaho, about 15 miles northeast of Orofino, at 4,406 feet.1,2 Its first tower was a 100-foot pole tower with an L-6 cab and a ground cabin for living quarters.1,2,3 The lookout lists date it to 1933, but a 1947 association report gives 1931 instead.3

In January 1939 a newspaper reported a road extension of about two and a half miles, which was expected to reach the lookout the next year.3

In 1947 the association replaced two of its oldest wooden lookouts, Whiskey Butte's 1931 tower among them, with steel towers made from war surplus.3 Its report says the new steel towers were seventy-five feet tall.3 Two lookout pages instead describe an 86-foot Army surplus steel tower built in 1948.1,2

Both pages date the move to Pierce to 1999, and the order of their entries suggests they mean the 1948 steel tower.1,2 The Forest Lookouts page says only that the tower went to a museum in Pierce, with no date.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Idaho list still marks the site as gone, which does not match the move.4

A Pierce visitor guide lists the J. Howard Bradbury Logging Museum, housed in a 1928 log cabin, with seasonal hours.5 That guide does not say whether the lookout is on display, and we could not confirm that it is the museum the lookout pages mean.

We found no source describing what, if anything, remains on the butte itself. Idaho Fire Lookouts marks the site drive-up, but it does not name the landowner or say whether visitors are welcome.2 Ask before going, since none of these sources names who controls the land.

  1. Whiskey Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/id/whiskeybutte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Whiskey Butte Lookout, Idaho Fire Lookouts, https://www.idahofirelookouts.com/st-joe-clearwater-region/whiskey-butte-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Whiskey Butte, Forest Lookouts, https://idaholookouts.weebly.com/whiskey-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Idaho Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/id (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Pierce, Clearwater County Adventures, https://clearwatercountyadventures.com/pierce/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Whiskey Butte Lookout
Whiskey Butte LookoutPhoto: idahofirelookouts.com · source

Photos keep their own rights and are shown with credit. Is one of these yours? You can ask for a different credit or for removal.

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: photos, 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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: design, height, agency, links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, 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

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