FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

Henry West

1928 log cabin, then a 1930 pole L-4 tower on the Lolo National Forest near Plains, Montana; destroyed in 1965 and listed as gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1965; no source describes the site now.

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 tower20-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1928
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.42990, −114.76734
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-henry-west

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. 1928 BuiltLog cabinSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1930 Built20-foot pole L-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  3. No record between 1930 and 1965
  4. 1965 DestroyedDestroyedSource: 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.

Henry West stood on the Lolo National Forest, six miles east-southeast of Plains, in Sanders County, Montana.1 The page dates the first structure, a log cabin, to 1928.1 The page lists a 20-foot pole L-4 tower for 1930.1 It gives the elevation as 6,053 feet.1 The association's list places the site at 47.430 N, 114.767 W.2

The firelookout.com list of Sanders County tower sites includes Henry West.3 The tower was destroyed in 1965.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the site as gone.2

No source I read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can visit it.

  1. Henry West Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/henrywest.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Sanders County Montana Forest Fire Lookout Tower Sites, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mtsanders.html (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. 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.