FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana

Hemlock Point

Missoula County, MT L-4 cab on the Lolo National Forest at 7,780 ft: built 1947, destroyed 1963, listed as a ground site. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com says destroyed in 1963; cause not given

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 (firelookout.com); ground site per the state listThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1947
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Missoula County, Montana
Coordinates
47.45855, −113.84158
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-hemlock-point

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 3.7 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. 1947 Builtfirelookout.com: 1947: L-4 cabSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1947 and 1963
  3. 1963 Destroyedfirelookout.com: Destroyed 1963; cause not givenSource: 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.

Hemlock Point was a lookout cab in Missoula County, Montana, on the Lolo National Forest, 25 miles northwest of Seeley Lake.1,2 Its elevation is listed at 7,780 feet.1 The Forest Lookouts page gives its land-survey location as 20N-18W-25.2

Firelookout.com dates the cab to 1947 and says it was destroyed in 1963.1 It was an L-4 cab, a design a Sanders County history describes as a 14-by-14-foot wood-frame cab that could sit on the ground or atop a tower.3 That history also says the L-4 was the design people chose most often for living in a lookout.3 The statewide list classes Hemlock Point as a ground site and marks it gone.4

The sources we read do not describe what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether it is open to visitors.1,2,4

  1. Hemlock Point Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/hemlockpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Hemlock Point, Montana Forest Lookouts (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/hemlock-point.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Remember When?, Sanders County Ledger, https://www.scledger.net/story/2021/08/19/communities/remember-when/6635.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. 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.