FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana

Burnt Fork Pinnacle

L-4 style lookout cabin on Burnt Fork Pinnacle, Lolo NF, about 1932; reported destroyed or removed in 1950; reached by a 3-mile trail; no remains described.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Blog says destroyed in 1950; Kemnow says removed, no date; Kamstra and firelookout.org list it as gone

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Forest Service trail from the Burnt Fork Trailhead to the summit; horses allowed; no structure described on the summit today

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
About three miles on Trail 418 from the Burnt Fork Trailhead to the summit; no potable water at the trailhead

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabL-4 style lookout cab (ground kind)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Missoula County, Montana
Coordinates
47.25330, −114.61200
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-burnt-fork-pinnacle

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 4.3 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. 1932 BuiltL-4 style cabin built in or around 1932 per the 2011 blog; Kamstra gives 1932 for the L-4 cabSources: montucky.wordpress.com, firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1932 and 1950
  3. 1950 DestroyedBlog says the cabin was destroyed in 1950; Kamstra gives 'Gone 1950'; Kemnow says removed without a dateSources: montucky.wordpress.com, 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.

Burnt Fork Pinnacle is a peak in Missoula County, in the Lolo National Forest, standing a little over 6,600 feet high.1,2 An L-4 style cabin served as its lookout.1,3 A 2011 blog dates the cabin to about 1932, and Rex Kamstra's list gives the same year.1,3

The blog says the cabin was destroyed in 1950, and Kamstra's entry also points to 1950 and lists the cabin as gone.1,3 Ron Kemnow's listing says it was removed and gives no date.2 The sources disagree on how it left the peak.1,3,2 The Montana lookout list marks it as gone.4

The peak is reached on foot.5 Trail 418 runs three miles from the Burnt Fork Trailhead to the summit, and the Forest Service says horses are allowed.5 There is no potable water at the trailhead.5 The 2011 blog says the trail climbs to the old lookout site.1 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains there today.

  1. Burnt Fork Pinnacle (blog post, February 2011), montucky, https://montucky.wordpress.com/2011/02/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Burnt Fork Pinnacle, Forest Lookouts (Montana), Ron Kemnow, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/burnt-fork-pinnacle.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Burnt Fork Pinnacle Lookout, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/burntforkpinnacle.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Montana lookout list, firelookout.org, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Burnt Fork Trailhead, USDA Forest Service Lolo National Forest, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r01/lolo/recreation/burnt-fork-trailhead (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, access, visiting details, 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.