FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Cold Peak

Mineral County, MT lookout: L-4 cab dated 1936 and destroyed 1955 per firelookout.com; the association lists it as ground and gone. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1955 according to firelookout.com; the Forest Fire Lookout Association also lists it as gone

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
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.26812, −115.11354
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-cold-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 4.1 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. 1936 BuiltThe page dates the L-4 cab to 1936Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1936 and 1955
  3. 1955 DestroyedThe page says the cab was destroyed in 1955; no cause is givenSource: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

Cold Peak was a lookout in Mineral County, Montana, two miles south of St. Regis.1 The page places the site in the Lolo National Forest and gives its elevation as 5,001 feet.1 Its page is titled Cold Peak Fire Lookout Cabin.1

The page dates the lookout's L-4 cab to 1936.1 It says the cab was destroyed in 1955.1

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground-type lookout that is gone, at 47.26812 north and 115.11354 west.2 Both sources record the lookout as destroyed or gone.1,2

Nothing we read says what, if anything, remains at the site today. The sources also do not say whether the spot is open to visitors, so anyone planning a trip should check with the Lolo National Forest first.

  1. Cold Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/coldpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. 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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, 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.