Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana
Boles Point
Lolo NF lookout near Seeley Lake, MT: 50' L-4 tower with observatory built by a CCC crew in 1938; destroyed 1957 per firelookout.com; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1957 according to firelookout.com; Forest Lookouts marks it removed without a date; no source describes the site now
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
- Type
- Cab on a tower50' pole L-4 tower with dwelling observatoryThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1938
- Height
- 50 ft (15.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Lolo National Forest
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Missoula County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.11352, −113.67622
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-boles-point
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
- 1938 BuiltBuilt by a CCC crew as one of eight new standard Lolo towers; 50 feet tall with a dwelling observatory on topSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1938 and 1957
- 1957 DestroyedDestroyed per firelookout.com; Forest Lookouts says removed, undatedSource: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Boles Point was a fire lookout in Missoula County, Montana, on the Lolo National Forest, about 10 miles southwest of Seeley Lake.1,2
In August 1938 a newspaper reported that Lolo forest rangers would put up three new lookouts that summer, one of them at Boles Point.2 All three sites were remote from roads, so a packstring of mules was sent to carry supplies over the mountain trails.2 By September the Missoulian reported that building at Boles Point was in progress.2
In November 1938 the Missoulian reported that a CCC crew had finished building the eighth and last of the standard towers planned for the Lolo forest.2 The Boles Point tower was 50 feet tall, topped by a dwelling observatory.2 Firelookout.com also dates it to 1938 and describes a 50-foot pole L-4 tower.1
Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1957.1 Forest Lookouts marks it as removed, without a date or cause.2 The two pages describe its end differently. We follow the dated account.
No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at Boles Point today, or whether the site is open to the public.
- Boles Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/bolespoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Boles Point, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/boles-point.html (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
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) Gave us: height, 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
- 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
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Boles Point on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Boles Point on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.