IDAHO COUNTY

CASTLE BUTTE

Selway National Forest > Clearwater National Forest
36N-10E-28
1914:  This site established as an observation point.

1916:   A frame cabin with windows on all sides constructed.

1928:   A L-3, log cabin with cupola, built.   (Kresek)

August 18, 1934:   The McLendon butte fire combined with high winds and smoke conditions, the fire covering a large area and exact details were impossible to determine, as a result the Castle Butte lookout was withdrawn for safety reasons.   (The Missoulian)

1950:   The present L-4 cab on a 8-foot rock and cement foundation constructed.

1981:  "The point was first occupied as a full time seasonal lookout in 1914 when Middlefork District Ranger Joseph McGhee sent Wolford Renshaw and his brother Hubert, with their horses and camp outfit, from Number one R.S. to man the peak as lookout and smokechaser.
     In 1915 Castle Butte smokechasers Wolford Renshaw and Shelton McPherson cut and peeled logs for cabin sills at Castle.  In 1916 the lumber stored at Bald Mtn. was packed over and a cabin was built on the rock capped peak.  Though crude by later standards, this was the first observatory on the Fish Lake District and it did have windows on all sides so employees dubbed it "The House of Glass".  The cabin was in use until 1929 when it was replaced by the more up-to-date L-3 log lookout cabin with a cupola for the firefinder and observer.
     Harry Chenoweth and Russell Stadtman dismantled the "House of Glass" in 1929 and in its stead built a new L-3 type cabin.  The L-3 was designed with a lower room about twelve feet square which was used for living quarters.  The fire-finder was housed in a five or six foot square, glass-enclosed observatory that projected through the roof.  The lower walls of this cabin were built of logs cut a year earlier; gable ends, roof and cupola were built of lumber covered with shingles or shakes.
     The cabin was used each summer until 1950 when it was replaced by an L-4 type structure.
     In August of 1950, Howard Beebe, a carpenter from Weippe, with guard Bill O'Brien and one or two other helpers began work on the new lookout cabin.  It was erected on a 7' high understory of the stone that is so abundant on the peak.  The cabin was one of the several that had been pre-cut at the Pierce carpenter shop during the previous winter.  To make the building more sturdy, all lumber, including catwalk railings, were cut full length.  There was no splicing as in some of the earlier pack-in-type cabins.
     It was built along side the old cabin which was used as crew quarters until the new one was ready for occupancy.  Construction cost was $1711.00.  Logs salvaged from the old cabin were, over a period of years, sawed up for wood to stoke the lookout's cook stove.  Some time around 1970 the lookout was abandoned."  (Louis Hartig, 'Historic Facilities of the Lochsa Ranger District' - 1981)