FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Big Creek

A 1933 pole lookout in the Flathead National Forest north of Whitefish, reported destroyed in 1957 by one source and removed by another; no site description found.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com gives Destroyed 1957; Forest Lookouts marks it Removed; the Forest Fire Lookout Association list reads Tower Gone.

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 tower20-ft pole tower, L-4 typeThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.58032, −114.27495
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-big-creek

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 4.3 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. 1933 Builtfirelookout.com: 20-ft pole L-4 tower. Only source for the build year.Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1933 and 1957
  3. 1957 Destroyedfirelookout.com: Destroyed 1957. Forest Lookouts gives no date and says Removed, so the cause and manner of loss are unconfirmed.Source: 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.

Big Creek Lookout stood in the Flathead National Forest, about 12 miles north of Whitefish in Flathead County, Montana, at an elevation of 6,430 feet.1,2 Firelookout.com dates it to 1933 and describes a 20-foot pole L-4 tower.1 Forest Lookouts gives its location code as 33N-21W-35, filed under Flathead County.2

Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1957.1 The Forest Lookouts site marks it "Removed," and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list reads "Tower Gone."2,3 The two accounts word the ending differently: destroyed in one, removed in the other.1,2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list places the site at 48.58032 north, 114.27495 west.3 No source describes what, if anything, remains on the site, and none says whether the ground is open to visitors.1,2,3

  1. Big Creek Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/bigcreek356.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Big Creek - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/big-creek.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana fire lookout 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.