FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Gunsight Mountain

Flathead National Forest cab dated 1939 and abandoned in 1951; listed as gone. The sources give no staffing or fire history and nothing on the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. 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 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1939
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
47.97393, −113.32840
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-gunsight-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 4.0 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

  1. 1939 BuiltL-4 cab dated 1939 on firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1951 AbandonedListed as abandoned in 1951Source: firelookout.com
  3. 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.

Gunsight Mountain's lookout was a cab dated to 1939, which firelookout.com calls an L-4 cab.1 It stood in the Flathead National Forest about ten miles northeast of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station, in Flathead County, Montana, at an elevation of 7,180 feet.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list records its type as ground rather than tower.3 The local history gives its survey location as 26N-13W-31.2

The cab was abandoned in 1951, and the listing now records the site as gone.1,3 All three sources use the name Gunsight Mountain and place the site in Flathead County.1,2,3 Anyone heading to the site should not expect a standing cab, since firelookout.com and the state index both mark it as gone.1,3

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

  1. Gunsight Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/gunsightmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Gunsight Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/gunsight-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, 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.