FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Boyd Mountain

1930s L-4 tower on Boyd Mountain in Mineral County, Lolo National Forest; one listing says abandoned, another says removed. A state list marks it gone. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as abandoned on one page and removed on another, with no dates for either; a state list marks it 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 towerL-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
Unknown
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.33482, −115.22456
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-boyd-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 4.1 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

No dated events recorded yet: nobody has recorded when this lookout was built or when it came down.

  1. Date unknown AbandonedListed as abandoned, with no year givenSource: firelookout.com
  2. Date unknown BuiltListed only as the 1930s; no exact year givenSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. Date unknown RemovedListed as removed, with no year givenSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com

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.

Boyd Mountain rises to 5,349 feet about six miles northwest of St. Regis, in Mineral County.1 Both listings place it in the Lolo National Forest.1,2

The lookout was an L-4 tower that dates from the 1930s, according to the listings.1,2 The second listing gives the same decade and a parenthetical credit to Kresek, with no further detail.2 In general terms, a local history column says the L-4 was far and away the favorite live-in design. It says these cabs could sit on the ground or on pole or timber towers as tall as 100 feet.3

The listings disagree on how the tower ended. One says it was abandoned.1 The other says it was removed.2 A state lookout list marks it as gone.4

We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the summit, or whether the site is open to visitors.1,2,4

  1. Boyd Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/boydmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Boyd Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/boyd-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Remember When: Lookouts in Sanders County, Sanders County Ledger, https://scledger.net/story/2021/08/19/communities/remember-when/6635.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Montana Lookouts, 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: 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
  4. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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.