FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Lion Hill

Flathead County, MT tower on Lion Hill near Hungry Horse: 50-ft pole L-4 tower from 1932, destroyed 1950; no source describes what remains today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1950 according to firelookout.com; 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 tower50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
50 ft (15.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.35663, −114.01433
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-lion-hill

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 4.1 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. 1932 Built50-foot pole L-4 tower listed for 1932 on firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1932 and 1950
  3. 1950 Destroyedfirelookout.com says 'Destroyed 1950'; the page gives no causeSource: 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.

The Lion Hill lookout was in Flathead County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest, about three miles southeast of Hungry Horse.1

The site had a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab from 1932. The page gives the hill's elevation as 4,830 feet.1

The tower was destroyed in 1950.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list also records the lookout as gone, at 48.35663, -114.01433.2

A 2023 Hungry Horse News item about a proposed Forest Service fuel break says the break would run along Lion Hill Road, Forest Service Road No. 5311, just south of Martin City.3 That article does not describe the lookout site. No source we read says what, if anything, remains there today, or whether the site is open to visitors.

  1. Lion Hill Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/lionhill.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Forest Service plans fuel breaks for Lion Hill, East Side Road, Hungry Horse News, https://hungryhorsenews.com/news/2023/sep/13/forest-service-plans-fuel-breaks-lion-hill-east-si/ (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, 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.