FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Bruce Ridge

Flathead NF ground lookout in Flathead County, Montana; gone. Firelookout.com gives a 1922 camp, a 1939 L-4 cab and abandonment in 1948; Forest Lookouts gives a 1930 entry.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com says abandoned 1948 and gone; the Forest Lookouts page says removed, with no date

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
Ground-level cabL-4 cab atop a minor crest of the ridgeThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
47.91177, −113.61113
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-bruce-ridge

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

  1. 1922 EventFirelookout.com lists a camp for 1922Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1930 BuiltForest Lookouts lists under the site's name a 1930 entry for the first Superior Building Company pre-cut lookout house built on the Flathead Forest; no other source confirms itSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1939 EventFirelookout.com lists an L-4 cab atop a minor crest of the ridge for 1939Source: firelookout.com
  4. 1948 AbandonedFirelookout.com says the cab was abandoned in 1948Source: firelookout.com
  5. Date unknown RemovedThe Forest Lookouts page says the site was removed; no date givenSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  6. 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.

Bruce Ridge had a fire lookout in Flathead County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest.1,2 The two main sources disagree about when the site was first developed.

Firelookout.com says the site had a camp in 1922, and an L-4 cab atop a minor crest of the ridge in 1939.1 The Forest Lookouts Montana page lists a 1930 entry under the site's name: the first pre-cut lookout house that the Superior Building Company built on the Flathead Forest.2 The sources do not reconcile the 1930 and 1939 dates, so both appear here.

Firelookout.com says the cab was abandoned in 1948 and is gone.1 The Forest Lookouts page says the site was removed, but gives no date for that.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a ground lookout that is gone.3

No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Bruce Ridge Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/bruceridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Bruce Ridge, Forest Lookouts (montanalookouts.weebly.com), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/bruce-ridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org), 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, 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.