FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Powell County, Montana

Center Ridge

Lolo National Forest lookout in Powell County, Montana: a 30-foot pole tower built 1933, abandoned 1947, burned about 2000 per firelookout.com; now gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Forest Lookouts lists the tower as Removed; firelookout.com says it burned about 2000

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 tower with a crow's nest about 1/8 mile northwestThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Powell County, Montana
Coordinates
47.19834, −113.17830
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-center-ridge

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 3.7 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. 1933 Built30-foot pole tower with a crow's nest 1/8 mile northwest, built in 1933 per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1947 AbandonedAbandoned in 1947 per firelookout.com; a later map label is covered in resolved_conflictsSource: firelookout.com
  3. No record between 1947 and 2000
  4. 2000 Burnedfirelookout.com says the tower burned about 2000; the year is approximateSource: firelookout.com
  5. 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.

Center Ridge was a fire lookout on the Lolo National Forest in Powell County, about 14 miles east of Seeley Lake.1,2 Firelookout.com says a 30-foot pole tower, with a crow's nest about an eighth of a mile to the northwest, went up in 1933.1

According to firelookout.com, the lookout was abandoned in 1947, and the tower burned about 2000.1 Forest Lookouts lists the tower as "Removed."3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the site as gone.2

A Pastmaps page describes a USGS topographic map of Dunham Point as documenting a "Center Ridge Lookout Tower."4 The map is titled 1968 and marked as published in 1970.4 Those dates fall more than 20 years after the 1947 abandonment that firelookout.com gives.1,4 The sources do not settle whether the tower was still standing then.

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Center Ridge Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/centerridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Center Ridge, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/center-ridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. 1968 Map of Dunham Point, Pastmaps, https://pastmaps.com/map/dunham-point-powell-county-mt-usgs-topo-1968-p1970 (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.