FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Madison County, Montana

Lone Mountain

Madison County, MT cupola cabin dated to 1921 and abandoned around 1930; listed as gone, and no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as Gone; Rex's Fire Lookout Page marks it 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 cabD-6 cupola cabinThe design: D-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1921
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Beaverhead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Madison County, Montana
Coordinates
45.27834, −111.45054
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-lone-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 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. 1915 EventEmergency telephone line under construction to the peak and planned use as a fire lookout station, per a July 1915 Spokesman-Review item quoted on Rex's pageSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1921 BuiltD-6 cupola cabin, per the firelookout.com listingSource: firelookout.com
  3. 1930 AbandonedListing says the cabin was abandoned around 1930Source: 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.

Rex's Fire Lookout Page quotes a July 1915 Spokesman-Review item about R.G. Willson, a forest supervisor, who was supervising construction of an emergency telephone line to Lone Mountain.1 The item also said the peak was planned as a lookout station for two forests, the Madison and the Gallatin.1

The Fire Lookout Cabin listing describes a D-6 cupola cabin dated to 1921, sitting at 11,166 feet, 14 miles east-southeast of Ennis in Madison County.2 The listing puts its abandonment at about 1930.2

The sources also differ on the forest.2,1 Rex's page gives one forest for the site, the Beaverhead National Forest,1 while the listing names the Beaverhead/Gallatin National Forests.2

The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a Ground type and as Gone.3 Rex's page marks it "Removed" but gives no date.1 None of the three pages describes what remains at the site today or whether visitors can reach it.2,1,3

  1. Lone Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/lone-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Lone Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/lonemtn.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: 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.