FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana

Newton Mountain

Kootenai National Forest tower in Lincoln County: camp 1921, L-4 tower 1934, destroyed 1959. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Recorded as destroyed in 1959 and listed as gone; no source describes what, if anything, remains on the mountain

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 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Lincoln County, Montana
Coordinates
48.69885, −115.97488
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-newton-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 4.3 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. 1921 EventCamp recorded at the site (firelookout.com gives only 'camp')Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1934 BuiltL-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  3. No record between 1934 and 1959
  4. 1959 DestroyedRecorded as destroyed; the source gives no causeSource: firelookout.com
  5. 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.

Newton Mountain lies in Lincoln County, six miles west-southwest of the Sylvanite Ranger Station, in the Kootenai National Forest.1 The lookout website gives its elevation as 6,538 feet, and records a camp at the site in 1921. An L-4 tower followed in 1934.1

The same website entry records the tower as destroyed in 1959.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list classes the site as a tower and gives its status as gone.2

A county list of Montana lookouts gives the mountain's legal location as 34N-34W-23.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the mountain today.

  1. Newton Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/newtonmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Lincoln County - Forest Lookouts, Montana Forest Lookouts website, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/lincoln-county.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. 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.