FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

Grouse Mountain

Sanders County tower dated 1935 and listed as gone by 1955; one 1941 newspaper item places a lookout man there. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone from 1955 (firelookout.com) and as removed or gone in the other two sources; no source describes what remains

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 towerL-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest; the local history lists Cabinet National Forest first, then Kootenai
Land
Federal land
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.84640, −115.41280
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-grouse-mountain

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 4.3 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. 1935 BuiltL-4 tower dated 1935 on firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1941 Staffed1941 newspaper item, quoted on the local history page, says a lookout man was home from his lookout on Grouse PeakSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1955 RemovedListed as 'Gone 1955' on firelookout.comSource: 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.

Grouse Mountain's fire lookout stood eight miles east of Trout Creek in Sanders County, Montana, at an elevation of 5,924 feet.1 The firelookout.com page dates the tower to 1935 and describes it as an L-4 tower.1 The two web sources name the forest differently. firelookout.com gives only the Kootenai National Forest, while the local history lists the Cabinet National Forest first and then the Kootenai.1,2

A 1941 item from the Sanders County Independent-Ledger, quoted on the local history page, says a man named Ray Bierwagen had been home for a weekend from his lookout. The item calls the site Grouse Peak rather than Grouse Mountain.2

The tower is listed as gone in 1955 on firelookout.com, and both the local history and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list show it as removed or gone.1,2,3

No source consulted describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether visitors can reach the ground where it stood.1,2,3

  1. Grouse Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/grousemtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Grouse Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/grouse-mountain.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, staffing, 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.