FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

High Point

Aermotor lookout on the National Bison Range near St. Ignatius, built 1934 and gone by 1986; no source describes the site today.

Tribal land: permission required

This site is on tribal land. Ask the tribe for permission before visiting, and follow its rules. On the Flathead Reservation. Ask the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes before visiting.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower and cabin gone by 1986 per firelookout.com and the CSKT list; the Montana list marks it Tower Gone

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent.

Access

Tribal land: permission required. See the warning at the top of this page.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerSteel Aermotor tower with a frame cabin; also a wildlife observation pointThe design: Aermotor
Built of
SteelGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1934
Height
65 ft (19.8 m)
Elevation
4,884 ft (1,489 m)
Agency
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Land
Tribal land
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.31948, −114.20310
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-high-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 its recorded height.

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. 1934 BuiltBuilt on the National Bison Range; a 1934 Missoulian item describes a crew erecting 60-foot towers, one planned for High PointSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com, fwrconline.csktnrd.org
  2. No record between 1934 and 1986
  3. 1986 RemovedSources say the tower and cabin were gone by 1986; no removal date is givenSources: firelookout.com, fwrconline.csktnrd.org
  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.

High Point is a lookout site on the National Bison Range, about five miles west of St. Ignatius in Sanders County, Montana.1,2

In February 1934 a Missoulian item reported that a crew of 25 men on the range was building roads and erecting three 60-foot steel towers for fire lookouts.3 The towers were to stand at High Point, Wild Horse Mesa and Thumb-Nob.3

The High Point lookout, put up in 1934, was a 65-foot Aermotor tower of steel with a frame cabin.1,2 Both sources say it doubled as a wildlife observation point.1,2 The 1934 item gives the planned towers as 60 feet, five feet less than that figure.3

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is named as the agency by firelookout.com and by the Montana page.1,3 The tribal list places High Point among its Flathead Reservation lookouts and names no agency for it.2

The tower and cabin were gone by 1986.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the tower as gone.4

No source we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether visitors may go there. A Coast and Geodetic Survey station, 30 feet west of the high point, was described in 1968, but that description does not say whether it survives.3

  1. High Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/highpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Fire Lookouts, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Division of Fish, Wildlife, Recreation & Conservation, https://fwrconline.csktnrd.org/Fire/FireOnTheLand/FireManagement/Lookouts/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. High Point, Forest Lookouts Montana, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/high-point.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. Fire Lookouts on the Flathead Reservation (CSKT Fire on the Land) Gave us: elevation, what it is built of, design, height, agency, ownership, access, dates, links Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes · No licence stated; facts only. Coordinates are geocoded (OSM Nominatim) or dead-reckoned -- see extra.coord_method per record. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: 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
  5. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, 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.