FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Marble Point

Lolo National Forest L-4 tower in Mineral County, built 1936 and destroyed in 1965; named lookouts from 1948 to 1954; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1965 per both accounts; 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 round timber pole towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
50 ft (15.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.22105, −115.04573
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-marble-point

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. 1936 Built50-foot pole tower with L-4 cab (firelookout.com); round timber tower with L-4 cab (Forest Lookouts)Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1948 StaffedFern Bonnell, a St. Regis school teacher, took over the summer lookout duties (Mineral Independent item, July 1948, quoted on Forest Lookouts)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1950 StaffedWally "Bigfoot" Hahn, named as a lookout by firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  4. 1953 StaffedMack Mage, named as a lookout by firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  5. 1954 StaffedJim Bookie, named as a lookout by firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  6. 1965 DestroyedDestroyed; both accounts give 1965Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  7. 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.

Marble Point was a Lolo National Forest lookout in Mineral County.1,2 Firelookout.com places it about 1.5 miles east of an earlier point two miles north-northeast of Sheep Mountain.1

The tower went up in 1936. One account gives it as a 50-foot pole tower and the other as a round timber tower, and both give it an L-4 cab.1,3

A July 1948 item in the Mineral Independent, quoted on Forest Lookouts, said that Fern Bonnell, a St. Regis school teacher, had taken over the summer lookout duties. It said she had already worked the station for the three summers before that.3

Firelookout.com lists three more known lookouts: Wally "Bigfoot" Hahn in 1950, Mack Mage in 1953 and Jim Bookie in 1954.1

The lookout was destroyed in 1965.1,3

No source describes what remains at the site today, or whether the spot is open to the public. The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the tower as gone.2

  1. Marble Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/marblepoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana fire lookout list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Marble Point - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/marble-point.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, 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.