Fire lookout · Lewis & Clark County, Montana
Caribou Peak
Lewis & Clark County, MT lookout site 22 mi SW of Augusta; firelookout.com dates it to the 1940s with a 20-ft pole L-4 tower, abandoned in the 1950s; a 1939 newspaper plan does not clearly match that timing; gone.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone; firelookout.com says Google Earth shows a foundation consistent with only a ground cab
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
- Ground-level cab20' pole L-4 tower (firelookout.com)The design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- Unknown
- Height
- 20 ft (6.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Helena/Lewis & Clark National Forests
- Land
- Federal land
- Location
- Lewis & Clark County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.18810, −112.57393
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-caribou-peak
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 4.2 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
- 1939 EventAugusta News item of August 3, 1939, proposing a lookout on Carabau Mountain 'this season' on the divide between the Helena and Lewis and Clark forests (quoted on Forest Lookouts)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
- TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.
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.
Caribou Peak is a former fire lookout in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, about 22 miles southwest of Augusta, at an elevation of 8,773 feet.1 The Forest Lookouts listing places it at township 17 North, range 8 West, section 36, in the Helena/Lewis & Clark National Forest.2
An Augusta newspaper item dated August 3, 1939, and quoted on the Forest Lookouts page, described a plan to build a lookout that season on a divide between the Helena and Lewis and Clark forests. The item spelled the name Carabau Mountain.2
The firelookout.com page dates the tower to the 1940s and describes it as a 20-foot pole L-4 tower.1 Neither source says whether the 1939 plan became that tower.1,2 The same page says the lookout was abandoned in the 1950s.1
Firelookout.com also reports that Google Earth imagery shows a foundation that fits a ground cab alone.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list marks the site as ground and gone.3 No source we read describes anything else at the site today.
- Caribou Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/cariboupeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Caribou Peak - FOREST LOOKOUTS (quoting The Augusta News, August 3, 1939), Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/caribou-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (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: 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)
- Caribou Peak on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Caribou Peak 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.