FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Emery Hill

Flathead NF 30-foot L-4 lookout tower about five miles east of Hungry Horse, dated 1932; listed as gone in 1948. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone in 1948, per firelookout.com.

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
Cab on a tower30-foot L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.39445, −113.93312
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-emery-hill

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 its recorded height.

Downloads about 3.7 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. 1932 Built30-foot L-4 tower dated 1932 by firelookout.com.Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1933 EventJune 1933 Flathead Courier item: eleven miles of road to be built to two lookout stations, one on Emory hill and one on Desert mountain.Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1933 and 1948
  4. 1948 EventListed as 'Gone 1948' on firelookout.com; the source does not say how the tower was removed.Source: firelookout.com
  5. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

Emery Hill sits at 5,406 feet, about five miles east of Hungry Horse, in the Flathead National Forest.1 The firelookout.com record describes a 30-foot L-4 tower dated 1932.1 A 1933 Flathead Courier item, quoted on a lookout history site, says 11 miles of road were planned to reach two lookout sites, one on Emory hill (the item's spelling) and one on Desert mountain.2 The same item says most of the crew was finishing a 1.5-mile stretch of Desert mountain road, clearing and grading, and predicts the work would help safeguard timber in the Coram experimental forest.2

The firelookout.com record lists the tower as gone in 1948, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list also marks it gone.1,3

None of the three cited sources says what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether visitors can reach it.

  1. Emery Hill Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/emeryhill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Emery Hill - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/emery-hill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana lookouts list, 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, height, 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.