Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana
Elk Mountain
Sanders County, MT, Kootenai NF: L-4 cab dated 1935 half a mile SW of the summit, destroyed 1955 per firelookout.com. Single-source dates; no description of the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed 1955 per firelookout.com; the FFLA list marks it gone; no source describes what remains 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
- Type
- Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1935
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kootenai National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Sanders County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.88592, −115.42703
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-elk-mountain-4
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 4.2 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
- 1935 Builtfirelookout.com gives an L-4 cab half a mile southwest of the summit under 1935; builder not namedSource: firelookout.com
- No record between 1935 and 1955
- 1955 Destroyedfirelookout.com: 'Destroyed 1955.' Not confirmed by a second source readSource: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Elk Mountain is a former lookout in Sanders County, Montana, about eight miles northeast of Trout Creek, in the Kootenai National Forest.1 Firelookout.com gives its elevation as 5,673 feet.1
Firelookout.com lists an L-4 cab, dated 1935, half a mile southwest of the summit.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list classes the site as a ground lookout and marks it as gone.2 Firelookout.com says the cab was destroyed in 1955.1
Montana had more than one lookout called Elk Mountain. The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list also has entries in Lincoln, Flathead and Missoula counties.2 The one the National Historic Lookout Register registered in January 2021 is in Lincoln County, and it is a different site.3
No source we read describes what remains on the summit today. Nothing we read says whether the site is open to the public, so treat it as unverified and check with the Kootenai National Forest before visiting.
- Elk Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/elkmtn344.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Elk Mountain Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/mt/elk-mountain-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- 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
- Elk Mountain Lookout (National Historic Lookout Register) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Elk Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.