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Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Pagoda Mountain

Flathead County, MT L-4 cab on the Flathead NF dated 1929; lookout Harold Hatton was struck by lightning in July 1937; listed gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Firelookout.com says abandoned and gone, with no date; the FFLA Montana list also marks it gone.

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
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
47.68655, −113.25852
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-pagoda-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 3.8 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. 1929 BuiltFirelookout.com dates the L-4 cab to 1929Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1937 EventOn July 13 lightning struck Hatton and a companion while they repaired a telephone line near the lookout. The companion is Roy Root in the Northern Region News report and the Forest Service history, and J. Wirth in the July 15 Billings Gazette report. Hatton never regained consciousness and died at a hospital; Root recovered per the news report.Sources: montanalookouts.weebly.com, npshistory.com
  3. 1937 StaffedHarold Hatton was the Forest Service lookout at Pagoda Mountain in July 1937Sources: montanalookouts.weebly.com, npshistory.com
  4. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

Pagoda Mountain stood on the Flathead National Forest in Flathead County, Montana, about 21 miles south-southeast of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station, at an elevation of 8,030 feet.1 Firelookout.com dates its L-4 cab to 1929.1

Harold Hatton was the Forest Service lookout there in July 1937.2,3 On the afternoon of July 13 he and a companion were repairing a telephone line near the lookout when lightning struck them both.2,3 The Forest Service history and a Northern Region News report name the companion as Roy Root, and the news report says Root was knocked out for 15 or 20 minutes before fully recovering.2,3 A July 15, 1937 Billings Gazette report, reprinted on the Forest Lookouts page, instead names J. Wirth and says he suffered no ill effects.2 Hatton never regained consciousness and died at a hospital.2,3

Accounts disagree on the horseback distance from the lookout to the Black Bear landing field.2,3 A 1937 newspaper report gives 12 miles, while the Forest Service history gives 11.2,3

Firelookout.com says the cab was abandoned and is now gone, without giving a date.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list also marks the site as gone.4

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public may visit it.

  1. Pagoda Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/pagodamtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Pagoda Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/pagoda-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. The Flathead Story, Chapter 26, npshistory.com, https://www.npshistory.com/publications/usfs/region/1/flathead/story/chap26.htm (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. 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: 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.