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Fire lookout · Lewis & Clark County, Montana

Falls Point

Falls Point lookout in the Scapegoat Wilderness: a 40-foot L-4 tower burned in the 2012 Falls Point Fire; remains are on the summit.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned in the 2012 Falls Point Fire; remains of the lookout were still on the summit in July 2024.

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. On-trail hike in the Scapegoat Wilderness.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
A well-traveled trail with a 6.4-mile approach from the North Fork trailhead, which has plenty of parking.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower40-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lewis & Clark County, Montana
Coordinates
47.22068, −112.90593
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-falls-point

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 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

  1. 1920 EventA camp was established at the site.Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1920 and 1935
  3. 1935 BuiltFirelookout.com says a 40-foot pole L-4 tower was built in 1935. Newspapers of 1935 and 1938 do not confirm this date.Source: firelookout.com
  4. 1938 BuiltConstruction at Falls Point reported under way in September 1938 (Missoulian). Completion date not given.Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1938 and 2012
  6. 2012 BurnedBurned in the Falls Point Fire of 2012. A dated August 13, 2012 entry says a wildfire consumed the standing ruin.Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com, pnwsota.org
  7. 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.

A camp was set up at the Falls Point site in 1920, and one history says a 40-foot pole L-4 tower went up there in 1935.1 Newspapers from 1935 and 1938 describe the plans and the work.2 The August 1935 Missoulian said crews working on trails and telephone lines in the upper Blackfoot were opening roads to new lookout points, and it named Falls Point as one of them, on the north fork of the Blackfoot.2 In August 1938 the Independent Record reported that Lolo rangers planned three lookouts that summer, one of them at Falls Point, and that each tower would be 50 feet tall.2 A September 1938 Missoulian report said work on the Falls Point lookout was in progress.2

Two modern accounts describe a 40-foot tower, while the 1938 Independent Record gives 50 feet, so the sources disagree on height.1,2,3 The dates disagree too. The 1935 date comes from one site, while the 1938 reports show work in progress.1,2

One history says the lookout was abandoned in the 1960s and was still standing in 2012.1 A dated entry for August 13, 2012, says a wildfire consumed the standing ruin.2 Both the firelookout.com and PNW-SOTA pages name the 2012 Falls Point Fire as the blaze that burned the tower.1,3

A July 2024 trip report from PNW-SOTA says the lookout's remains are still visible on the summit.3 The lookout site is inside the Scapegoat Wilderness.1 The same report describes a 6.4-mile approach on a well-traveled trail, with plenty of parking at the trailhead.3

  1. Falls Point Fire Lookout Tower, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/fallspoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Falls Peak (Point) - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/falls-peak-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Falls Point, MT | July, 2024, PNW-SOTA, https://www.pnwsota.org/activation-reports/ae7ap/2025-10-01/falls-point-mt-july-2024 (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: height, 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, access, 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.