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Fire lookout · Grant County, Oregon

Silver Butte Lookout Site

Grant County, OR: 1930s pole tower with L-4 cab; fell in the mid-1960s, a later 1980 tower removed about 2005; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower fell down in the mid-1960s; a later 1980 tower was removed about 2005. No source describes the site today.

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
Cab on a tower30-ft pole tower with L-4 cab (register and firelookout.com); the register adds a 14x14 ft cab; a 1935 newspaper item says 40 ftThe design: L-4
Built of
Wood
Built
1935
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
6,191 ft (1,887 m)
Agency
U.S. Forest Service
Land
Federal land
Location
Grant County, Oregon
Coordinates
44.90475, −118.55109
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-or-silver-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 4.1 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. 1935 Built1935 newspaper item (quoted by weebly): forest ERA crew finishing a 14 by 14 ft house and a 40-ft lookout tower. Register dates the 30-ft tower to the 1930s.Sources: firetower.org, oregonlookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1965
  3. 1965 DestroyedTower fell down in the mid-1960s (register and firelookout.com)Sources: firetower.org, firelookout.com
  4. No record between 1965 and 1980
  5. 1980 Replaced by a new structureA later tower dated 1980 stood at the site (register)Source: firetower.org
  6. No record between 1980 and 2005
  7. 2005 RemovedThe later 1980 tower was removed about 2005 (register)Source: firetower.org
  8. 2011 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered July 16, 2011 as FFLOS US 1091, OR 448Source: firetower.org
  9. 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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Silver Butte stands about 23 miles southeast of Ukiah in Grant County, Oregon.1 A lookout went up there in the 1930s.2

The sources disagree on the tower's height. The register describes a 30-foot pole tower with a 14-by-14-foot L-4 cab, and firelookout.com gives the same 30-foot height with an L-4 cab.2,1 A 1935 newspaper item, quoted by a lookout history site, says an ERA crew working in the forest was wrapping up a 14-by-14-foot house and a 40-foot lookout tower on the peak.3 That same crew had earlier run seven miles of telephone wire up to the summit.3 The register and firelookout.com place the site in the Umatilla National Forest.2,1 The history site calls it the Whitman National Forest.3

The tower fell down in the mid-1960s, according to the register and firelookout.com.2,1 The register also says a later tower, dated 1980, was removed about 2005.2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Oregon county list marks the tower as gone.4 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Silver Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/or/silverbutte97.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Silver Butte Lookout Site, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/or/silver-butte-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Silver Butte - Forest Lookouts, oregonlookouts.weebly.com, https://oregonlookouts.weebly.com/silver-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Oregon Lookouts (by County), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/or/or-co/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Photo of Silver Butte Lookout Site
Photo: Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source
1952
1952 (1952)Photo: Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · source

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Sources

  1. Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (FFLOS) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, what it is built of, register numbers, agency, ownership, dates, photos, links Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  2. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists Gave us: type, status, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  3. 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
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: height, 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, 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

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