FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lewis & Clark County, Montana

Dalton Mountain

Helena NF lookout 7 miles south of Lincoln, MT: a 20-ft pole L-4 tower built 1934, destroyed 1971 per firelookout.com; no description of the site today found.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1971 according to firelookout.com; no source read describes what remains on the site

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. No source read describes public access to the site

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower20-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Helena National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lewis & Clark County, Montana
Coordinates
46.84723, −112.71632
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-dalton-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 4.3 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. 1933 StaffedAlf Wendler of Lincoln stationed at the lookout in July 1933, per a Helena newspaper item quoted by Forest LookoutsSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1934 Builtfirelookout.com lists the 20-foot pole L-4 tower for 1934; the April 1934 newspaper item describes the new station under construction with a July 1 deadlineSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1971
  4. 1971 Destroyedfirelookout.com gives 'Destroyed 1971'; no second source was readSource: 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.

Dalton Mountain lies about seven miles south of Lincoln, in Lewis and Clark County, on the Helena National Forest.1 In October 1933 Forest Service officials were gathering data for a lookout station and tower on the mountain, to be built with Public Works Administration funds.2 A Lincoln man named Alf Wendler was already stationed at a lookout there in July 1933, when a deer spooked his pack horses and he was taken to Helena for medical care.2

The April 1934 plan called it a new lookout station in the Willow Creek district, with the work due to be finished by July 1.2 Firelookout.com dates the tower to 1934 and describes it as a 20-foot pole tower of the L-4 type.1

Firelookout.com records that the tower was destroyed in 1971.1 No source read describes what, if anything, remains on the mountain today, or whether the site is open to visitors.1,2

  1. Dalton Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/daltonmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Dalton Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Montana), quoting Independent (Helena) items from 1933 and 1934, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/dalton-mountain.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, 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.