FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lake County, Montana

Cedar Point

Lake County, MT Flathead NF lookout: a 30-ft L-4 tower built 1934 and since removed; a 1940 federal survey describes the lookout house.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Both sources list the tower as removed; no removal date given

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
Cab on a tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lake County, Montana
Coordinates
47.66813, −113.93783
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-cedar-point

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 4.0 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. 1934 BuiltFirelookout.com: 30-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1934Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1940 Condition assessmentCoast and Geodetic Survey described the lookout house in 1940 and recorded its condition as goodSource: ngs.noaa.gov
  3. 1951 FireAugust 5, 1951 Daily Inter Lake item places a fire about one mile east of Cedar lookout; the item does not say the lookout watched itSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Cedar Point is in Lake County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest.1 Firelookout.com describes a 30-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1934 and reports that it was later taken down.2

A federal survey gives more detail on the site. In 1940 the Coast and Geodetic Survey described a Forest Service lookout house on a bare peak about 10.5 miles east of Polson, in the Mission Range, and rated the survey mark in good condition that year.3 A 1951 newspaper report placed a fire about a mile east of Cedar lookout, which lies northwest of the Condon ranger station.1,3

Both pages list the tower as removed.1,2 No source we read describes what remains on the peak today, or whether the public can visit. The survey datasheet's condition history ends in 1940.3

  1. Cedar Point, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/cedar-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cedar Point Lookout, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/cedarpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Datasheet for ST0618 (Cedar Lookout), National Geodetic Survey, https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=ST0618 (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, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.