FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Garnet Peak

Flathead NF ground lookout: an L-4 cab dated 1936, abandoned 1956 and listed as gone; no source describes what remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1956 and listed as gone; no source describes what remains at the site

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 (ground site)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
47.61324, −113.44774
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-garnet-peak

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 4.1 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. 1936 BuiltL-4 cab, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1940 EventCoast and Geodetic Survey station description calls the structure a Forest Service lookout houseSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1940 and 1956
  4. 1956 AbandonedAbandoned 1956Source: firelookout.com
  5. 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.

Garnet Peak is a former Forest Service lookout in the Flathead National Forest, in Flathead County, Montana.1,2

The firelookout.com record dates an L-4 cab on the peak to 1936.1 A Coast and Geodetic Survey description from 1940 calls the structure a Forest Service lookout house and places it 12 miles northwest of Big Prairie Ranger Station.2 The firelookout.com record uses a different landmark, 24 miles south of Spotted Bear Ranger Station.1 The two accounts do not share a reference point, so a map check is worth doing before anyone heads out.

The cab was abandoned in 1956 and is now listed as gone.1,3 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground lookout.3 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Garnet Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/garnetpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Garnet Peak - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts (Montana), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/garnet-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, 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.