FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Doris Mountain

Flathead County, MT L-4 cab lookout: firelookout.com dates it 1931 with destruction in 1950; a 1930 newspaper report places a forestry student on it, so the dates conflict.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com says the cab was destroyed in 1950; no source describes the site today

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
1931
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.30374, −114.07731
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-doris-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. 1930 StaffedForestry student Kendall Rutherford reported stationed on Doris lookout in a Daily Inter Lake item dated August 4, 1930; the same item reports he drowned while swimming in an unnamed South Fork district lake the afternoon before it ranSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1931 BuiltL-4 cab, per firelookout.com; conflicts with the 1930 staffing reportSource: firelookout.com
  3. No record between 1931 and 1950
  4. 1950 Destroyedfirelookout.com says the cab was destroyed; no cause givenSource: 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.

Doris Mountain is about six miles south of Hungry Horse, in Flathead County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest.1 Its elevation is 7,437 feet.1

Firelookout.com describes an L-4 cab built in 1931 and destroyed in 1950.1 A Daily Inter Lake report dated August 4, 1930, reprinted on the Forest Lookouts Montana page, says a forestry student was stationed on Doris lookout at the time.2 The two dates do not line up, and the sources we read do not explain the gap.1,2

That report names Kendall Rutherford, 19 years old, a forestry student of Wyoming who was stationed on the lookout. It says he died by drowning while swimming in an unnamed lake in the South Fork district, on the afternoon before the report ran.2

Firelookout.com does not give a cause for the 1950 destruction.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association list classes the site as a ground lookout and marks it gone.3

No source we read describes what remains on the mountain today or whether visitors may go there. Check with the Flathead National Forest before planning a trip.

  1. Doris Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/dorismtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Doris Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts Montana, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/doris-mountain.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.