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Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Ninemile Divide

Mineral County, MT lookout on Ninemile Divide: a 1927 summer post at a camp, a 40-ft pole L-4 tower built 1931 and removed 1964; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Removed in 1964 per firelookout.com; no source describes what 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 tower40-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.21857, −114.75234
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-ninemile-divide

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. 1927 StaffedMissoula school principal posted as a summer fire lookout on the divide, at a camp, before the 1931 tower (Missoulian item of July 16, 1927, as quoted by Forest Lookouts)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1931 Built40-foot pole L-4 tower (firelookout.com)Source: firelookout.com
  3. No record between 1931 and 1952
  4. 1952 StaffedMr. & Mrs. Daniel Demontigny listed as lookout personnelSource: firelookout.com
  5. 1964 RemovedTower removedSource: firelookout.com
  6. 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.

The Ninemile Divide lookout stood on the divide of the same name in Mineral County. The site is six miles east-northeast of Superior, in the Lolo National Forest.1,2

The earliest reference we found is from July 1927.3 Quoting The Missoulian, the Forest Lookouts page reports that a Missoula school principal was posted on the divide as a summer fire lookout, and that he spent several days fixing up the camp.3

Firelookout.com says the tower was built in 1931. It was a 40-foot pole L-4 tower.2 The same page lists Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Demontigny as lookout personnel in 1952.2

The tower came down in 1964.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association list marks the site as gone.1

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today.

  1. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Ninemile Divide Fire Lookout Tower, Fire Lookout (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/ninemiledivide.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Ninemile Divide, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/ninemile-divide.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: 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.