FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Picture Mountain

Flathead NF lookout listed as a frame cupola cabin in 1928, given an L-4 cab in 1939, abandoned in 1950 and now gone; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1950 per firelookout.com; Forest Lookouts says removed; no removal date given

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 cabFrame cupola cabin (1928); L-4 cab added in 1939The designs: L-4, Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1928
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
47.76377, −113.46215
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-picture-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 4.1 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. 1928 BuiltListed as a frame cupola cabin for 1928Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1939 AlteredListed as receiving an L-4 cab in 1939Source: firelookout.com
  3. 1950 AbandonedListed as abandoned in 1950Source: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

Picture Mountain's lookout stood in Flathead County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest, about 12 miles south of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station.1 Its listing gives the elevation as 7,729 feet.1 The page title calls it a cabin.1 Forest Lookouts places it at township 23 north, range 15 west, section 12.2

The earliest date the listing gives is 1928, when the lookout was a frame cupola cabin.1 In 1939 it received an L-4 cab.1

The listing says it was abandoned in 1950 and is now gone.1 Forest Lookouts marks it as removed.2 The Montana lookout list classes it as a ground site, not a tower, and marks it gone.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site, or whether anyone can visit it. Check with the Flathead National Forest before planning a trip.

  1. Picture Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/picturemtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Picture Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/picture-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts (alphabetical list), firelookout.org, 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.