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Fire lookout · Park County, Wyoming

Clayton Mountain Lookout Site

Built 1940 as an L-4 cabin on a timber tower on Clayton Mountain; gone, with nothing left at the site, per the register.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Register gives no removal date and says nothing remains at the site.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. The summit is reached by the Blackwater Fire Memorial trail, a National Recreation Trail. No closure appears in these sources.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
The trail starts near the Blackwater recreation resort and the Firefighter Memorial on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, and ends with a steep climb.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cabin on a timber towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Wood
Built
1940
Height
Unknown
Elevation
10,219 ft (3,115 m)
Agency
US Forest Service - Shoshone National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Park County, Wyoming
Coordinates
44.40866, −109.72832
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-wy-clayton-mountain

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 4.2 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. 1940 BuiltRegister dates the cabin on a timber tower to 1940Sources: firetower.org, westlookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1940 EventForest Service recommended renaming Double Mountain for Ranger Clayton; the 1940 report quotes the name changeSources: firetower.org, en.wikipedia.org
  3. No record between 1940 and 2022
  4. 2022 Added to the Former Fire Lookout Sites RegisterRegistered on the Former Fire Lookout Sites Register on March 14, 2022Source: firetower.org
  5. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. 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.

Clayton Mountain lies in the Absaroka Range, in Park County on the Shoshone National Forest.1,2 On August 21, 1937, fifteen firefighters died on its west slopes during the Blackwater Fire.1 The peak is named for Forest Service ranger Alfred G. Clayton, who died in the fire along with some of his crew.1

A 1940 Forest Service report, quoted on the register, says the Forest Service had recommended renaming Double Mountain for Ranger Clayton.3 The same report says a lookout tower was being built on the peak, one with a wide view over much of the Shoshone National Forest.3 The register describes it as an L-4 cabin on a timber tower, built in 1940.3,2 No photograph of it has been located.3

The register gives no removal date.3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Wyoming list marks the tower as gone.4

The register reports that no part of the tower is left at the site.3 The American Trails guide to the Blackwater Fire Memorial says the Forest Service tower there is gone.5 The route starts near the Blackwater recreation resort and the Firefighter Memorial on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, and it ends with a steep climb.5 The trail is a National Recreation Trail, designated in 1979, and the guide says the vistas repay the effort of the trail's last mile.5 No source I found describes the summit in any more detail.

  1. Clayton Mountain, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Mountain (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Clayton Mountain, Forest Lookouts, westlookouts.weebly.com, https://westlookouts.weebly.com/clayton-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Clayton Mountain Lookout Site (US 2076, WY 3), Former Fire Lookout Sites Register, firetower.org, http://firetower.org/lookouts/us/wy/clayton-mountain-lookout-site/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Wyoming lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/wy/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Blackwater Fire Memorial, Wyoming, American Trails, https://americantrails.org/resources/blackwater-fire-memorial-wyoming (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Photos

Clayton Lookout Sketch
Clayton Lookout SketchPhoto: Karl Brauneis, via Former Fire Lookout Sites Register (firetower.org) · All rights reserved · 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. 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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: 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
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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.