FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Battery Mountain

Flathead NF tower near Bigfork, built 1932 as a 30-ft L-4 pole design; one source says destroyed 1957, another says removed with no year.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. One source says destroyed in 1957; another lists it only as removed, with no year given.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Access unknown

We do not know the access rules. Check with the land manager before you go.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower, recorded as an L-4 designThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.05432, −113.74883
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-battery-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 its recorded height.

Downloads about 4.1 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. 1932 Built30-foot pole L-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1932 and 1957
  3. 1957 DestroyedDestroyed 1957 according to firelookout.com; montanalookouts lists it only as removed, with no dateSource: firelookout.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left.

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 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Battery Mountain once carried a fire lookout on the Flathead National Forest, about 15 miles east of Bigfork in Flathead County, Montana.1 The site sits at roughly 6,900 feet.1 The tower dates to 1932 and is recorded as a 30-foot pole L-4 design.1

The two lookout pages that cover the tower disagree on how it ended.1,2 One says it was destroyed in 1957.1 The other lists it only as removed and gives no year.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks it as gone.3 Both accounts point to a tower that no longer stands.1,2

The site is listed as gone,3 but the sources we checked do not describe what, if anything, remains there or whether the spot is open to visitors.

  1. Battery Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/batterymtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Battery Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Montana Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/battery-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts (Alphabetical List), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

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: 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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: agency, ownership, 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
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, 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.