FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Jefferson County, Montana

Casey Peak

Jefferson County, MT summit lookout; sources disagree on its date, and a hiking blog describes only a stone base left on the summit.

Ruins: Only footings or remains are left. Listed as ruins by firelookout.com and firelookout.org; a 2023 hiking blog describes a stone structure on the summit with its wooden upper story gone

Visit & stay

Ruins: footings or remains only. There is no structure to climb or rent.

Access

Open to the public. Hikers reach the summit on foot by trail from the Casey Meadows Trailhead; no closure or permission rule found in the sources read

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Trail begins at the Casey Meadows Trailhead, a 16-mile drive from Helena (hiking blog)

Facts

Status
Ruins
Type
Two-story buildingL-4 cab on a stone baseThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
Unknown
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Helena National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Jefferson County, Montana
Coordinates
46.42971, −111.81876
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-casey-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 3.6 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. 1937 EventJune 1937 newspaper item, reprinted by Forest Lookouts, announced a planned lookout station on High peak with a 20-foot log tower; the item itself does not name Casey PeakSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. TodayRuinsOnly footings or remains are 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Casey Peak sits in Jefferson County, Montana, and the Forest Lookouts page places it in the Helena National Forest.1 Hikers reach the summit on foot from the Casey Meadows Trailhead, about 16 miles by road from Helena, according to a hiking blog.2 A trail listing also points visitors to the Helena National Forest visitor map.3

The Forest Lookouts page reprints a June 1937 newspaper item about a new lookout station on High peak, at the head of McClellan Creek.1 The item describes a planned 20-foot log tower with a glass-walled cab, with the station expected to be in place around early July that year.1 The article does not name Casey Peak. The page places it under that name.1

The sources disagree about when the lookout was built.4,2 Firelookout.com describes an L-4 cab on a stone base from the 1930s and lists the site as ruins.4 The firelookout.org list also marks it as ruins.5 The hiking blog says the stone lower floor was part of a fire lookout that saw only brief service in the early 1900s, with a wooden upper floor above it.2

A July 2023 hiking post describes a stone structure on the summit.2 The post says the wooden upper level had come down several years before it was written, so the stone base appears to be what remains.2 We found no source that describes the site in more detail.

  1. Casey Peak, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/casey-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Just this once?, bigskywalker.com, https://bigskywalker.com/2023/07/05/casey-peak-southeast-of-helena/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Casey Peak Trail, Southwest Montana, https://southwestmt.com/listings/casey-peak-trail/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Casey Peak Lookout, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/caseypeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Montana fire lookouts list, 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: 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
  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.