FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Crossover

Also known as Crossover Mountain

Flathead NF lookout in Flathead County, MT; L-4 cab dated 1937 by one listing, standing in 1940 survey, destroyed in the 1950s; listed as gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in the 1950s 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 cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.03280, −113.55815
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-crossover

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. 1937 BuiltListed as 1937 L-4 cab (firelookout.com)Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1940 EventCoast and Geodetic Survey description of the Forest Service lookout houseSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1950 DestroyedListed as destroyed in the 1950s; 1950 stands in for the decade and is not a date from the sourceSource: 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.

Crossover Mountain, in Flathead County, Montana, had a Forest Service lookout on the Flathead National Forest, about eight miles north of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station.1,2 The listing gives an elevation of 6,624 feet.1

The listing dates the cab to 1937 and labels it an L-4 cab.1 A 1940 Coast and Geodetic Survey description already describes the lookout house, so the building was standing by then.2

The 1940 description places the house on a sharp pointed peak, about two miles east of the South Fork of the Flathead River and about 15 miles northeast of Swan Lake.2 The two sources differ slightly on direction, with one saying north and the other north-northwest.1,2

The listing says the lookout was destroyed in the 1950s.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as gone.3

We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Crossover Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/crossover.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Crossover - Forest Lookouts, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/crossover.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: 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.