Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana
Arbo Mountain
Kootenai National Forest lookout about 19 miles northwest of Libby, MT: wooden L-4 tower built 1934, listed as gone; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Open to the public
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone by the Forest Fire Lookout Association and firelookout.com; no removal date in the sources read.
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. Summit area is along the public Skyline Trail on Kootenai National Forest land; no source describes the lookout site itself.
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- The Skyline Trail runs near the summit; from the trail, go about 1,000 feet north to the south shoulder for a view.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerWooden L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kootenai National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Lincoln County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 48.62475, −115.78946
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-arbo-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 4.4 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
- 1934 BuiltListed as a wooden L-4 tower at 10 feet; the listing does not say whether 10 feet is the heightSource: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Arbo Mountain rises about 19 miles northwest of Libby, in Lincoln County, Montana, on Kootenai National Forest land. The site lists an elevation of 6,244 feet.1
A lookout went up on Arbo Mountain in 1934. Firelookout.com describes an L-4 design built of wood and gives a figure of 10 feet without saying what it measures.1
The Forest Fire Lookout Association marks the tower as gone.2 Firelookout.com lists it as gone as well.1
The Skyline Trail, part of the National Recreation Trail System, runs near the summit.3 Its trail listing says the trail and the lookouts on Arbo, Skyline and Quartz mountains were built for fire suppression.3 The listing adds that a hiker can reach a south shoulder about 1,000 feet north of the trail, with views over the Mule Creek and Seventeen Mile Creek drainages.3
No source describes what, if anything, remains of the lookout site today.
- Arbo Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/arbo.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Skyline Trail, National Recreation Trails, https://www.nationalrecreationtrails.com/trails/skyline-trail-2 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, type, status, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- 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
- Skyline Trail (National Recreation Trails) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Arbo Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.