FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Powell County, Montana

Kid Mountain

Ground-level L-4 cabin in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Flathead NF; built 1930, still there in 1956, since removed. No site description found.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone. Firelookout.com says it was still there in 1956 and has since departed; Montanalookouts lists it as removed with no date.

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 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Powell County, Montana
Coordinates
47.40957, −113.28356
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-kid-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 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. 1930 Builtfirelookout.com: L-4 cab built in 1930, replacing an earlier campSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1930 and 1956
  3. 1956 Eventfirelookout.com: still standing in 1956; removal date not given by any source readSource: firelookout.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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 Kid Mountain lookout was a cabin rather than a tower.1 Firelookout.com describes it as an L-4 cab that stood in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, built in 1930 to replace an earlier camp.1 Montanalookouts lists the Flathead National Forest as the agency.2

Firelookout.com says the cabin was still there in 1956 but has since gone.1 Montanalookouts lists the site as removed, but gives no date.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the cabin as ground gone.3

A 2021 Flathead Beacon feature on the forest's historic buildings says its lookout network, which once had an important role, has been almost entirely taken apart.4 That article does not mention Kid Mountain by name.4

We found no source that describes what, if anything, is left at the cabin site today, or whether the public can visit it.1,2

  1. Kid Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/kidmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Kid Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Montanalookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/kid-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Cabins in the Woods, Flathead Beacon, https://flatheadbeacon.com/2021/05/18/cabins-in-the-woods/ (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.