FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

Cube Iron Mountain

Lolo NF L-4 tower on Cube Iron Mountain, in 1935 and 1936 newspaper items; sources disagree on destroyed in 1959 versus removed; now gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Sources disagree on how it ended: firelookout.com says destroyed in 1959; the Forest Lookouts page says removed, with no date.

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. A hiking guide describes a trail route up to the summit; the sources read describe no closure.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Hiking guide: 8.5 miles round trip on Trails 459 and 450, with a side trail up to the summit.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.68700, −115.29112
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-cube-iron-mountain

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 4.0 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. 1935 Builtfirelookout.com gives 1935 for the L-4 tower; a June 1935 newspaper item says Cube Iron Peak took the place of Mount Headley as a lookout station.Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1936 StaffedAn August 1936 newspaper item names Halvor Ekern as the lookout on Cube Iron.Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1936 and 1959
  4. 1959 Destroyedfirelookout.com says destroyed in 1959. The Forest Lookouts page says removed, with no date.Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.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.

Cube Iron Mountain is in Sanders County, Montana, in the Lolo National Forest.1,2

firelookout.com dates the lookout to 1935 and describes it as an L-4 tower.3 A June 1935 item in the Sanders County Independent-Ledger reported that Cube Iron Peak had replaced Mount Headley as a lookout station.1 The same item said some Cabinet peaks had stopped serving as lookouts, a change tied to visual observation mapping of the forest.1

An August 1936 item in the same paper names Halvor Ekern as the lookout on Cube Iron, and notes that three people hiked up to visit him.1

The sources do not agree on how the tower ended. firelookout.com says it was destroyed in 1959.3 The Forest Lookouts page says it was removed and gives no date.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's county list shows a tower that is gone.2

A hiking guide describes a trail route up to the summit of Cube Iron Mountain, using Trails 459 and 450 for 8.5 miles round trip.4 The guide says the summit looks west toward the American Selkirks and east toward the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness.4 We found no source that describes what, if anything, remains of the lookout today.

  1. Cube Iron Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/cube-iron-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts (by County), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/mt-co/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Cube Iron Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/cubeiron.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Cube Iron Mt, Inland NW Routes, https://www.inlandnwroutes.com/cube-iron-mt.html (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, access, staffing, 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.