FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Powell County, Montana

Crimson Peak

Flathead NF cabin near Seeley Lake, Powell County, MT; 1930s L-4 cab, abandoned 1956, burned 1959 per one listing; listed as gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned 1959 per firelookout.com; Forest Fire Lookout Association 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 cab10' wooden L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Powell County, Montana
Coordinates
47.30169, −113.32719
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-crimson-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. 1930 BuiltSource gives only the 1930s; 1930 stands in for the decade and is not a date from the sourceSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1930 and 1956
  3. 1956 AbandonedAbandoned 1956 per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  4. 1959 BurnedBurned 1959 per firelookout.com; only listing found for this dateSource: 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.

Crimson Peak, in Powell County, Montana, had a lookout about 11 miles northeast of Seeley Lake, at an elevation of 8,229 feet.1 Both lookout listings place it on the Flathead National Forest.1,2

The listing describes the cabin as a 10' wooden L-4 cab and dates it to the 1930s.1 It says the cabin was abandoned in 1956 and burned in 1959.1

A USGS name entry lists both the Flathead and the Lolo national forests as related terms, without saying which one holds the peak.3 The forest assignment therefore rests on the two lookout listings.1,2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as gone.4 We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether visitors can reach it.

  1. Crimson Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/crimsonpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Crimson Peak - Forest Lookouts, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/crimson-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Crimson Peak, USGS Thesaurus, https://apps.usgs.gov/thesaurus/term-simple.php?thcode=1&code=q48114SWF2 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. 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: 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, 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.