FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana

Iris Point

Lolo NF peak near Missoula: 1930 30-ft wooden tower with glass cabin, trailer 1961-72, abandoned after 1972; brief height corrected from 15.2 m to 9.1 m.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone; firelookout.com says the site has been abandoned since 1972

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. On Lolo National Forest land; the survey datasheet describes a Forest Service trail and pack route. No closure found in the sources read

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Forest Service trail from Gilbert Creek, about a three-hour pack; or up Schwartz Creek by truck road, then about 1.5 hours of pack along the ridge (survey datasheet, description dated 1957)

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot wooden tower with a 14-foot-square glass-walled cabin (1930 report); firelookout.com calls it a 30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Missoula County, Montana
Coordinates
46.71082, −113.73936
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-iris-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 4.3 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. 1930 BuiltCompleted by November 1930: 30-foot wooden tower with a 14-foot-square cabin, cost about $70. Firelookout.com also gives 1930 for a 30-foot pole towerSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1930 and 1961
  3. 1961 EventPop-up cupola trailer used as the lookout through 1972Source: firelookout.com
  4. 1972 AbandonedSite described as abandoned since the trailer use endedSource: 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.

Iris Point is a peak on the Lolo National Forest, in Missoula County, Montana, about 16 miles southeast of Missoula, at an elevation of 6,425 feet.1 Sources disagree on where it lies from Bonita. A 1930 report puts it about five miles southeast of Bonita, while a federal survey datasheet puts it 5.0 miles west-southwest of the Bonita Ranger Station.2

Firelookout.com says a platform set in three trees came first, in the 1920s, and a 30-foot pole tower was built in 1930.1 The Missoula National Forest had announced the new station in May 1930.2 That plan called for a 50-foot tower with a lookout stationed there during the fire season.2 By November 1930 the tower was finished: a 30-foot wooden tower with 14-foot-square living quarters enclosed in glass, which cost about $70.2

A September 1930 report described the planned design: a 14-by-14-foot cabin on a timber frame, with its floor 30 feet off the ground, which would let the lookout stay at his post virtually around the clock.2

According to firelookout.com, a pop-up cupola trailer served as the lookout from 1961 to 1972.1 The site has stood unused since, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.1,3

We found no source that describes what remains on the peak today. A federal survey datasheet, reproduced on the Forest Lookouts page, says the survey marker was anchored in rock beneath the middle of the lookout tower.2 It describes two ways in: a Forest Service trail from Gilbert Creek, about a three-hour pack, or a shorter route up Schwartz Creek, where the truck road ends and the last stretch is a pack along the ridge of about an hour and a half.2 The description dates from 1957, and the datasheet does not say whether the marker or any footings are still there.2

  1. Iris Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/irispoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Iris Point, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/iris-point.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: height, 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, height, status, agency, access, visiting details, 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.