FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Lodgepole Mountain

Flathead NF lookout in Flathead County, MT: a 10-foot pole L-4 tower built in 1931 and destroyed in 1961; the site lies in the Great Bear Wilderness.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1961 according to firelookout.com; no later structure is described in the sources read.

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. The site is inside the Great Bear Wilderness on Flathead National Forest land. No source describes a route to the site or what stands there now.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
No trail or route to the site is described in the sources read.

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower10-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.09620, −113.20923
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-lodgepole-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. 1931 BuiltBuilt as a 10-foot pole L-4 tower, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1931 and 1961
  3. 1961 DestroyedDestroyed in 1961; firelookout.com 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.

Lodgepole Mountain's lookout stood on Flathead National Forest land in Flathead County, Montana, about 21 miles southeast of Essex, at an elevation of 7,211 feet.1 Forest Lookouts lists its legal location as 27N-12W-18.2

Firelookout.com dates the tower to 1931 and calls it a 10-foot pole L-4 tower.1 The Forest Service's history of the Flathead says the L-4 was a standard design with a gabled roof and windows on every side.3

Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1961 and gives no cause.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list also marks it as gone.4

The site is inside the Great Bear Wilderness.1 The Forest Service history says that wilderness was designated in 1978.5 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the ground today, or whether a route leads to the site.

  1. Lodgepole Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/lodgepolemtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Lodgepole Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/lodgepole-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Trails of the Past: Historical Overview of the Flathead National Forest, chapter 9, USDA Forest Service (hosted by npshistory.com), https://npshistory.com/publications/usfs/region/1/flathead/history/chap9.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Trails of the Past: Historical Overview of the Flathead National Forest, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/r01/flathead/publication/trails-past.pdf (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, 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.