FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

Loveland Peak

Sanders County L-4 timber tower on Loveland Peak, built 1934 and destroyed in 1960; no source describes what remains at the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1960 per firelookout.com and Forest Lookouts; no source describes remains at the site

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 towerL-4 cab on a 50-foot pole towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
50 ft (15.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.99450, −115.84206
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-loveland-peak

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 4.0 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. 1934 Built50-foot pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1960
  3. 1960 DestroyedDestroyed in 1960; Forest Lookouts adds that it was toppled and burnedSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.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.

Loveland Peak is in Sanders County, Montana.1 The tower went up in 1934. It was a timber tower, 50 feet tall, with an L-4 cab.2,3

The two main accounts agree on those dates. They differ on the forest. One names only the Kootenai National Forest, while the other lists the Cabinet, Kaniksu and Kootenai national forests together.2,3

The tower was destroyed in 1960.2 One account adds that it was toppled and burned.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the peak today, or whether the spot is open to visitors. The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.1

  1. Montana fire lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Loveland Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/lovelandpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Loveland Peak - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/loveland-peak.html (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: design, 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, 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.