FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Ravalli County, Montana

Fish Lake

Ravalli County L-4 cab on Bitterroot NF, dated 1937 and gone by 1958 per firelookout.com; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone 1958 per firelookout.com; the Montana page says removed and the FFLA list says gone; 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 cab (firelookout.com)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Bitterroot National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Ravalli County, Montana
Coordinates
45.99894, −113.74980
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-fish-lake

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 3.8 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. 1937 BuiltL-4 cab dated 1937 per firelookout.com; the page does not say it was built that yearSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1937 and 1958
  3. 1958 Removed'Gone 1958' per firelookout.com; the page does not say how it was removedSource: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

The Fish Lake lookout stood in Ravalli County, in the Bitterroot National Forest, 21 miles east of Darby.1,2 firelookout.com gives its elevation as 8,525 feet.1 The same site lists it as an L-4 cab dated 1937.1 The association's list gives its type as ground.3

The Montana page gives the land description 3N-17W-20 and marks the lookout removed.2 firelookout.com says the cabin was gone by 1958, 21 years after its 1937 date.1 The association's list also marks it gone, with coordinates of 45.99894 and -113.7498.3

No source describes what remains at the site today, or whether the spot is open to visitors. Because every source records it as gone, a visitor should not expect a standing lookout here.1,2,3

  1. Fish Lake Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/fishlake.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Fish Lake, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/fish-lake.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana lookout 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, 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.