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Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana

Condon Ranger Station

Flathead NF 90-ft steel Aermotor tower built 1949 beside the old Condon Ranger Station; gone by 1975, while the station residence is now a rental cabin.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com says gone by 1975; Forest Lookouts lists it as Removed. The 1920s station compound survives and is rented.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. The restored ranger residence is rented year-round through Recreation.gov. No source describes access to the tower site, which is gone.

Road to the top?
Yes, you can drive up
Trail
Drive from Highway 83 along Condon Loop Road 124 to the rental cabin. The tower itself is gone.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower90-foot steel Aermotor towerThe design: Aermotor
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1949
Height
90 ft (27.4 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Missoula County, Montana
Coordinates
47.58470, −113.73610 sources disagree
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-condon-ranger

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 4.1 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. 1949 Built90-foot steel Aermotor tower, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1956 EventForest Service photo captioned as taken from the Condon lookout tower; the tower stood thenSource: bigforkeagle.com
  3. No record between 1956 and 1975
  4. 1975 RemovedGone by 1975; no removal date or cause givenSources: firelookout.com, firelookout.org
  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.

The lookout stood at about 3,600 feet in Missoula County, Montana, beside the old Condon Ranger Station.1 Firelookout.com describes a 90-foot steel Aermotor tower, built in 1949.1 The station itself is older. The Forest Service built its compound in the early 1920s, and the two-story log residence went up in 1923 for $3,330.10.2,3

The station was a working base for decades. Montana Trail Briefs says it served as the central base for forest rangers, lookout crews, and fire guards for over 40 years, until a new ranger station was built near the highway and airstrip in 1965.3 Bigfork Eagle adds that several lookouts and fire guards still used the old site as their principal base after the newer station opened.4

Firelookout.com reports that the tower no longer stood by 1975.1 Forest Lookouts (Montana) lists it as "Removed," and the Forest Fire Lookout Association marks it "Tower Gone."5,6 A Forest Service photo from 1956 was taken from the lookout tower, so the tower was standing then.4 A correction note from Montana Ranger Stations places the tower east of the truck shed, not north, and dates the truck shed to the summer of 1939.7

The ranger's residence is now a cabin the Forest Service rents year-round. It costs $85 a night, sleeps eight comfortably, and is booked through Recreation.gov.2 Montana Trail Briefs says most of the outbuildings from the 1920s compound still stand.3 The Forest Service notes that not all of the original buildings remain.2

To reach it, turn east off Highway 83 between mileposts 48 and 49 onto Condon Loop Road 124, then drive about 2.5 miles.2 We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains of the tower on the site today.

  1. Condon R.S. Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/condonrs.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Old Condon Ranger Station, Flathead National Forest, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r01/flathead/recreation/old-condon-ranger-station (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Old Condon Ranger Station, Montana Trail Briefs, https://www.montanatrailbriefs.com/blog/old-condon-ranger-station (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. A worthless lot of shacks: Ranger Stations of the Swan Valley, Bigfork Eagle, https://bigforkeagle.com/news/2022/feb/02/worthless-lot-shacks-ranger-stations-swan-valley-a/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Condon Ranger Station, Forest Lookouts (Montana), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/condon-ranger-station.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  7. Corrections, Montana Ranger Stations, https://montanarangerstations.net/corrections-and-updates/corrections/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩

Where sources disagree

We show disagreements between sources instead of quietly picking one. If you know which is right, please tell us.

  • Sources disagree on the location by 5.6 km (3.5 mi).

    • FFLA: 47.58470, −113.73610
    • FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites): 47.53560, −113.71950

    The map uses the position from FFLA.

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, access, visiting details, 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.