FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Judith Basin/ Meagher County, Montana

Mount High

A 1936 40-foot pole tower of L-4 design in the Little Belts, destroyed in 1968 and later removed; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1968 per firelookout.com; a 1972 NGS station description says the tower was removed

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 tower40-foot pole tower of L-4 design (firelookout.com)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
40 ft (12.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lewis and Clark National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Judith Basin/ Meagher County, Montana
Coordinates
46.71010, −110.27723
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-mount-high

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. 1936 Built40-foot pole tower of L-4 design per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1937 EventNewspaper describes the forest's planned 50-foot towers; Mount High is one of four stations completed or nearly soSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1947 StaffedStanley Bechel reported as lookout at Mount HighSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1953 StaffedFrancis Fitzpatrick of Butte appointed lookout on Mt. HighSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1953 and 1968
  6. 1968 DestroyedDestroyed per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  7. 1972 RemovedNGS station description (USGS, 1972), reproduced on Forest Lookouts: the lookout tower has been removed; no visible signs of the exact location remainSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  8. 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.

Mount High, a lookout about 24 miles southeast of Neihart, stood on the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the Little Belt Mountains.1,2 Firelookout.com places it in Judith Basin/Meagher County.1

Firelookout.com dates the lookout to 1936 and describes a 40-foot pole tower of L-4 design.1 An October 1937 Big Timber Pioneer report said the forest service was taking steps to put its lookouts on 50-foot towers, and it named Mount High as one of four stations completed or nearing completion.2 That 50-foot figure describes the forest's plan rather than this tower's height, so the 40-foot figure from firelookout.com is used here.1,2

Newspapers name lookouts on the peak in 1947 and 1953. In August 1947 Stanley Bechel, the lookout, reported temperatures below freezing one Friday night.2 In 1953 a Butte man, Francis Fitzpatrick, was appointed lookout.2

Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1968.1 A National Geodetic Survey station description, reproduced on Forest Lookouts and described by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1972, says the tower was taken down and that nothing visible marks its exact spot.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks it as gone.3

No source describes the site today, and none says whether visitors may go there.

  1. Mt. High Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/mthigh.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Mount High - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Montana), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/mount-high.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: 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.