Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana
Flatrock
Mineral County, MT lookout site on the Lolo NF: 1933 crow's nest, then a 50-foot pole L-4 tower by 1941; destroyed in the 1970s per firelookout.com; FFLA lists it gone.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in the 1970s, with no exact year; the FFLA Montana list marks it gone
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
- Cab on a towerCrow's nest (1933), then a 50-foot pole tower with L-4 cab (1941)The design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1933
- Height
- 50 ft (15.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Lolo National Forest (as named on firelookout.com)
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Mineral County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.40738, −115.23447
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-flatrock
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 4.0 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
- 1933 BuiltCrow's nest, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
- 1941 Built50-foot pole tower with L-4 cab, listed for 1941; the page does not say what became of the crow's nestSource: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Flatrock sits in Mineral County, Montana, on the Lolo National Forest, about 10 miles northwest of St. Regis.1 The Fire Lookout website gives its elevation as 5,129 feet.1 The association's Montana list gives the coordinates as 47.40738, -115.23447.2
The first structure the website lists is a crow's nest from 1933.1 By 1941 the site had a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1
The website says the tower was destroyed in the 1970s, without a more exact date.1 The association's Montana list marks the site as a tower that is gone.2
We found no source that describes what remains at the site today, such as footings or a foundation, or whether the public can visit it. Anyone planning a trip should ask the Lolo National Forest about access before heading out.
- Flatrock Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/flatrock.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (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, 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
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Flatrock 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.