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Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Cobden Point

Mineral County, MT tower on the Lolo NF: built 1934 as a 30-foot L-4, gone by 1967; no source describes what remains at the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone by 1967 per firelookout.com; no source says how or when it came down.

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 towerL-4 observation cab on a 30-foot round timber towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.10848, −114.74838
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-cobden-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 4.3 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 BuiltL-4 observation cab on a 30-foot round timber tower; construction reported from March 1934Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1950
  3. 1950 StaffedBuddy Campbell listed as lookoutSource: firelookout.com
  4. 1953 StaffedWilliam Oliver listed as lookoutSource: firelookout.com
  5. 1957 StaffedLloyd Reesman (early season) and Mabel Vann (late season) listed as lookoutsSource: firelookout.com
  6. 1967 RemovedFirelookout.com says gone by 1967; the date and cause of removal are not in any source readSources: firelookout.com, firelookout.org
  7. 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.

Cobden Point is a former fire lookout about eight miles southeast of Superior, Montana, on the Lolo National Forest in Mineral County.1,2

The tower was under construction by the spring of 1934. The Missoulian reported that a crew was building a lookout tower near Cobden to watch the timber for fires.2 The Lolo forest had also ordered materials for ten new lookout towers that year, and one listed location was Cobden knob, which may be this point.2 The finished lookout was an L-4 observation cab on a 30-foot round timber tower.1,2

Records name a few lookouts: Buddy Campbell in 1950, William Oliver in 1953, and Lloyd Reesman and Mabel Vann in 1957.1 Firelookout.com lists the tower as gone by 1967, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association also marks it gone.1,3 Neither source says how the tower came down.

No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site, and none says whether the public can reach it.

  1. Cobden Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/cobdenpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Cobden Point - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/cobden-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, 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: design, 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, 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.