FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana

Cayuse Hill

Missoula County, MT tower: firelookout.com dates it 1932 and says it was destroyed in 1966 on private land; a 1933 newspaper item names a different forest.

Private land

No public access. Please do not trespass; view it only from public land. Firelookout.com says the site is located on private property

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com says destroyed in 1966; the Forest Lookouts page lists it as removed

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Private land. See the warning at the top of this page.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower40-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Missoula County, Montana
Coordinates
47.03051, −114.37093
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-cayuse-hill

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 3.9 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 BuiltFirelookout.com dates the 40-foot pole L-4 tower to 1932; a 1933 newspaper item conflicts (see resolved_conflicts)Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1933 EventSeptember 1933 newspaper item reports the transport of a 40-foot lookout tower to Cayuse, naming the Clearwater forestSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1934 EventMarch 1934 Daily Missoulian item reports Civilian Conservation workers building a road from the Nine Mile region to the Cayuse Hill lookout on the Lolo forestSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1934 and 1966
  5. 1966 DestroyedFirelookout.com: destroyed 1966Source: firelookout.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.

Cayuse Hill is in Missoula County, Montana.1 Firelookout.com describes a 40-foot pole L-4 tower there, dated to 1932.2 The Forest Lookouts page places the site on the Lolo National Forest.1

The dates do not fully agree. A September 1933 newspaper item reports that a 40-foot tower had been hauled to Cayuse the week before, but it names the Clearwater forest rather than Lolo.1 A March 1934 newspaper item describes Civilian Conservation workers building a road from the Nine Mile area toward the lookout, which it places on the Lolo forest.1

The end is also reported differently. Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1966.2 The Forest Lookouts page lists it only as removed.1

No source we read describes what remains at the site today. Firelookout.com says the site is on private property, and we found no source describing public access.2

  1. Cayuse Hill, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/cayuse-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cayuse Hill Fire Lookout Tower, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/cayusehill.html (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, height, status, agency, access, 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.