Lookout Butte Lookout
1Heads up1 fire 23 mi away
- Right now
- Closedrecreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend, read 16:10 UTC
- Sites
- 1In the agency’s record
The place
the agency’s own description · what’s there · 11 notices
In the agency’s own words
Lookout Butte has a history that spans nearly 80 years and has been home to three lookout towers. The first, built in 1923, was 45 feet tall with just a platform on which to stand. A cabin was put on the tower a couple years later. In 1935, a 50-foot tower was constructed. A new tower was built beside the old one in 1962, and this is currently available for rent. The current 60-foot wooden tower offers panoramic views and the perfect setting for enjoying the area's tranquility and natural beauty. Guests can enjoy the scenery from the exterior catwalk or from inside the single-room cabin. Keep reading
Recreation
Several primitive roads in the area are open to mountain biking and off-road vehicles. Other activities in the area include hiking through second-growth forest and birding.
Facilities
The lookout has room for up to four people and comes with two twin beds with foam mattresses and two cots. Other amenities include a propane stove and oven, a table and chairs, a broom, a bucket and a mop. A pit toilet sits downhill to the south of the lookout, and there's a campfire ring near the base. Guests should be prepared to haul supplies up five flights of stairs. Guests are required to bring their own drinking water. Other recommended supplies include food, sleeping bags or bedding, coolers, cookware and utensils, dishes, warm clothing and rain gear, flashlights, extra batteries, first aid kit, matches, toilet paper, garbage bags and the combination for the lookout and gate. Click here for more information about this lookout.
Natural Features
The lookout sits at 5,869 feet in elevation with breathtaking views of the Selway Crags in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness area, the Seven Devils Mountain Range, Coolwater Ridge, Pilot Knob Lookout and the Lochsa and Selway River drainages.
Nearby Attractions
Guests can take a sightseeing drive from Lowell to Selway Falls and back. This 42-mile drive offers opportunities to appreciate the pristine beauty of the Selway River, a Wild and Scenic River, as well as picturesque Selway Falls.
What the agency tells you
Guests will recieve lock combination in confirmation email after reservation is complete, make sure to have this with you before going to the lookout as cell service is not reliable
Guests are discouraged from bringing small children due to the dangers that exist on towers of this height; use caution with pets
Access to lookout requires a vehicle with high ground clearance for the last half mile; trailers are not recommended
Everything else this campground posts · 8
Most lookouts have occasional visits from Forest Service employees or members of the public who want to look at the views from the catwalk or use the pit toilet; the public is allowed at this site.
Be sure to lock the cabin if you leave for the day.
Cell phone coverage is unreliable.
This is a pack-it-in/pack-it-out facility.
No livestock allowed at the lookout site.
Please stay inside cabin during lightning activity or high winds.
Click here for more information about Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests
Don't Move Firewood: Prevent the spread of tree-killing pests by obtaining firewood near your destination and burning it on-site. For more information visit dontmovefirewood.org.
Tents and rigs
- Sites
- 1 · 1 cabin
- Hookups
- None
- Accessible sites
- None listed
Facilities
- Toilets
- Pit Toilets
- PIT TOILETS on 1 of 1 campsite records
- Drinking water
- None, bring your own
- “Guests are required to bring their own drinking water.”
Around the campground
- On the water
- River
- Hiking
- Historic site
Nothing to book until it reopensread 16:10 UTC
recreation.gov lists every site closed this weekend
Every one of the next thirty nights is in recreation.gov’s record and not one site is being offered on any of them. That’s a campground closed or not yet released for booking, not a sold-out one.
Tell me when it reopens
Watch for it to come back
One email when the agency reopens it, plus More Than Just Parks dispatches. Unsubscribe any time.
We check the agency’s own record once an hour, at 40 minutes past, and write the first time it stops saying closed.
Scanners that check every few minutes exist, and most of them charge. This one is free, it reads the same calendar, and it won’t always be first.
Every line of the receipt · 11
What you actually pay
Who keeps the booking fee
The agency’s own policy text says the reservation fee and the cancellation processing fee are “retained by the reservation service contractor”, and that a campground concessionaire will decline to refund them because “they did not receive these fees”. Recreation.gov is run under contract by Booz Allen Hamilton. What share of your booking fee the contractor keeps isn’t published in any federal dataset we can read, so we print no number for it. Our reporting on the contract →
How we know this receipt · 4
Why this page can’t say why
recreation.gov lists every site at Lookout Butte Lookout closed this Friday and Saturday night. The U.S. Forest Service has published no closure notice we hold, so this page can’t say why, and it won’t fill the gap with a guess. A closed night isn’t a sold-out one: the reservations its record still carries were taken before the sites were closed.
There’s no notice to quote and no reason to argue with, so this page offers you the watch and the list below, and no letter.
Open within 60 miles · 4
The agency’s own word that these are open, not our reading of a season.
- Rocky Bluff CampgroundNezperce National Forest · 12 mi · walk-up
- Spring Bar CampgroundNezperce National Forest · 14 mi · walk-up
- North Fork Slate Creek CampgroundNezperce National Forest · 16 mi · walk-up
- Wildhorse CampgroundNezperce National Forest · 16 mi · walk-up
recreation.gov availability, read 16:10 UTC · rules read Sep 9, 2026 · rates Oct 1, 2026 · How we know all this
The sites
1 sites · the site map
All 1 sites
The price is derived by CAMPANAC, not published per site: the per-night rate this campground publishes for each site’s own site type. 1 of the 1 sites listed carry one, and a site whose type has no published rate sits out of the price rather than being called free.
| LOOKOUT BUTTE LOOKOUT | LB1 | lookout | 2,850 ft | $40 |
OpenStreetMap has no toilet mapped within 1 km of this campground, so no site here carries a toilet distance. That’s a gap in the map, not a finding about the campground.
Getting there
the map and the coordinate · the agency’s directions · the phone number
Where it is
Adams Ranger StationNezperce National Forest · 14 mi
JeanettePayette National Forest · 15 mi
BurgdorfPayette National Forest · 15 mi
Burgdorf Guard StationPayette National Forest · 15 miTravel to Lowell, Idaho, located approximately midway between Lewiston, Idaho and Missoula, Montana on Highway 12, milepost 97. Cross the Selway Bridge, drive 3.5 miles and cross the Swiftwater Bridge on your right. Follow the signs 13 miles for about 1 hour to the lookout.
Alternative Route
From Hwy 12, cross the middle fork of the Clearwater River at the bridge above Kooskia (MP 74) turn left onto paved County Road 1842, towards the Kooskia National Fish Hatchery, pass the fish hatchery approximately, 3.5 miles stay to the left on County Route 286 for approximately 5 miles when it will convert from County Road to Forest Road 286 and turn into a gravel road. Follow Forest Road 286 for an additional 8 miles where Forest Road #470 joins from the left. Stay right on #286 for approximately 1.5 miles to the junction of Road #286 w/ Forest Road #1129 and take a left onto #1129. Travel approximately 1.3 miles and the spur road to Lookout Butte Lookout is signed and to the right. It is about 1/8th of a mile up the lookout from the main road. This last segment is a rough, outsloped, native surface road that requires high clearance to reach Lookout Butte Lookout Tower.
The weather
the next four days
Next four days, and the thirty-year normal
Forecast
NWS forecast for Riggins, ID
The land, and who answers for it
who answers for it
Who answers for this land
Lookout Butte Lookout is in Idaho’s 1st congressional district. Its representative, Russ Fulcher (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →