It was discovered on 8 January 1970, by Russian astronomers Hejno Potter and A. Lokalov at the Cerro El Roble Station near Santiago, Chile.
[12] Spahr is a non-family asteroid of the main belt's background population when applying the hierarchical clustering method to its proper orbital elements.
[4][11] In December 2009, a first rotational lightcurve of Spahr was obtained from photometric observations by French amateur astronomer René Roy.
Spahr was with the photographic Bigelow Sky Survey, which searched for high-latitude minor planets using the 0.41-m Catalina Schmidt telescope.
[13] The asteroid's name was proposed by his MPC-colleges Brian Marsden, Gareth Williams and Stephen Larson,[12] and published by the MPC on 3 May 1996 (M.P.C.