FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders/ Flathead County, Montana

Bassoo Peak

Also known as Basso

Sanders County, MT lookout on the Flathead Reservation: 1934 pole tower, 1938 L-4 tower, current cab built 1983, staffed each summer per CSKT; no public visiting route found, so ask the tribes first.

Tribal land: permission required

This site is on tribal land. Ask the tribe for permission before visiting, and follow its rules. The tribes list the lookout among those on the Flathead Reservation, and a 1938 report puts the peak on the boundary with the Cabinet Forest. The sources read give no public visiting route and state no permission rule.

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Tribal land: permission required. See the warning at the top of this page.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Staffed during fire season

Facts

Status
Standing
Type
Two-story buildingTwo-story wood cab with shed roof on a concrete base (1983); earlier L-4 cab (1964)The design: L-4
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1934
Height
12 ft (3.7 m)
Elevation
6,391 ft (1,948 m)
Agency
Lolo National Forest/Flathead Indian Reservation (firelookout.com listing)
Land
Tribal land
Location
Sanders/ Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
47.85125, −114.78813
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 9 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-bassoo-peak

View from the cab

What you see from the 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.

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. 1934 Built30-foot pole platform towerSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1938 Replaced by a new structure50-foot pole tower with L-4 cab, following the 1934 platform towerSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1938 and 1964
  4. 1964 AlteredSurplus L-4 cab fittedSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1964 and 1983
  6. 1983 BuiltCurrent wood cab on a concrete base; CSKT calls it a new lookout built in 1983Sources: fwrconline.csktnrd.org, firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  7. 1984 EventNew lookout put into service (CSKT)Source: fwrconline.csktnrd.org
  8. TodayStandingIt still stands, as far as our sources know.

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 9 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Bassoo Peak is a lookout site at 6,391 feet in Sanders County, Montana.1,2 A June 1938 report in the Sanders County Independent-Ledger, quoted on the Forest Lookouts site, placed the peak where the Cabinet Forest meets the Flathead Indian Reservation.3 The firelookout.com listing gives the agency as the Lolo National Forest and the reservation.1

The first tower was a 30-foot pole platform, which appears in 1934.1,3 In 1938 a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab followed it, and a surplus L-4 cab was fitted in 1964.1,3 A 1940 survey description, reproduced on the Forest Lookouts page, gives the wooden tower's height as about 30 feet.3 That does not match the 50-foot figure for 1938, and the sources do not explain the gap.

The current lookout dates from 1983.1,3 Firelookout.com describes a wooden cab on a 10-foot concrete base, and the Forest Lookouts page describes a two-story cab with a shed roof.1,3 The tribes' fire program dates the current lookout to 1983, with a 12-foot cinderblock base and a 16-by-16-foot cabin, and says it opened for service in 1984.2 The two accounts disagree on the base height.1,2

The tribes' fire program says the peak was first posted in the late 1950s or early 1960s, which is later than the 1934 date above.2 The same page calls it the nicest lookout on the reservation and says it is manned every summer.2 We found no named lookouts or notable fires for Bassoo Peak in the sources we read.

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists Bassoo Peak as standing, with a two-story cab.4 The tribes list it among the lookouts on the Flathead Reservation.2 A 1938 report put it on the boundary between the reservation and the Cabinet Forest, so the sources leave its exact position unclear.3 We found no public visiting route. Anyone interested should ask the tribes' fire program before going there.

  1. Bassoo Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/bassoopeak.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  2. Fire Lookouts on the Flathead Reservation, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Division of Fish, Wildlife, Recreation & Conservation, https://fwrconline.csktnrd.org/Fire/FireOnTheLand/FireManagement/Lookouts/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  3. Bassoo Peak, Forest Lookouts (western US), Ron Kemnow, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/bassoo-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩
  4. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-09). ↩

Photos

Bassoo Peak L.O.
Bassoo Peak L.OPhoto: Gary Marin and Luke Channer, via firelookout.com · source
Bassoo Peak in 2015
Bassoo Peak in 2015 (2015)Photo: Gary Marin and Luke Channer, via firelookout.com · 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. Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists 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
  2. firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page Gave us: elevation, agency, photos, 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
  3. Fire Lookouts on the Flathead Reservation (CSKT Fire on the Land) Gave us: height, ownership, access, staffing, dates, links Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes · No licence stated; facts only. Coordinates are geocoded (OSM Nominatim) or dead-reckoned -- see extra.coord_method per record. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: what it is built of, design, 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
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, status, agency, access, staffing, 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.