FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Haugan Mountain

Lolo NF lookout near Haugan, MT: a 1916 pole platform, then a 1937 L-4 tower. Sources date its loss to 1924 or 1955 and describe no remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower gone. Sources give different dates for its loss, and none 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
1916
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.38116, −115.44038
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-haugan-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 4.2 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. 1916 Built30-foot pole platform tower, per Rex's Fire Lookout PageSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1924 BurnedA spreading fire destroyed the station in July, per 1924 newspaper reports quoted on Forest LookoutsSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1937 BuiltL-4 tower, per Rex's Fire Lookout PageSource: firelookout.com
  4. No record between 1937 and 1955
  5. 1955 DestroyedDestroyed 1955 per Rex's Fire Lookout Page; the 1924 newspaper reports date the loss earlierSource: firelookout.com
  6. 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 Haugan lookout stood on Haugan Mountain in Mineral County, Montana, about 17 miles northwest of St. Regis.1 Rex's Fire Lookout Page places it in the Lolo National Forest and dates a 30-foot pole platform tower to 1916 and an L-4 tower to 1937.1

Newspaper reports from July 1924, reprinted on the Forest Lookouts page, describe a spreading fire that destroyed the Haugan station and left the crew with none of their equipment saved.2 Forest officials believed a careless smoker on the middle fork of Big Creek started the blaze.2

The two accounts do not line up. Rex's page does not mention a 1924 fire and says the tower was destroyed in 1955.1 The newspaper reports place the loss in 1924.2

The Forest Lookouts page marks the site as removed, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list shows the tower as gone.2,3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether the ground is open to visitors.1,2,3

  1. Haugan Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/hauganmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Haugan Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/haugan-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana fire lookouts 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.