FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana

Pinkham Mountain

Kootenai NF lookout: camp about 1914, platform 1921, pole tower 1924 (height disputed), L-4 tower 1949; gone by 1981; firelookout.com says the log cabin is still there.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower gone by 1981 per firelookout.com; the same undated page says the 1924 replacement log cabin is still there

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' platform between 3 trees (1921); 55' pole tower with 7x7' cab (1924); 41' treated timber L-4 tower (1949)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1921
Height
70 ft (21.3 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lincoln County, Montana
Coordinates
48.64316, −115.09171
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-pinkham-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 its recorded height.

Downloads about 4.5 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. 1914 EventEstablished as a camp about 1914Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1921 Built40' platform between three trees, with log cabin living quartersSource: firelookout.com
  3. 1924 Built55' pole tower with 7x7' cab and a replacement log cabin; the Inter Lake reported a 70-foot tower the same yearSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1924 and 1949
  5. 1949 Built41' treated timber L-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  6. No record between 1949 and 1981
  7. 1981 RemovedTower gone by 1981; the year is the latest date givenSource: firelookout.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.

Pinkham Mountain's lookout stood in Lincoln County, Montana, on the Kootenai National Forest, 16 miles south of Eureka at an elevation of 6,322 feet.1 The site began as a camp around 1914.1 In 1921 a 40-foot platform went up between three trees, along with a log cabin for living quarters.1

In 1924 a 55-foot pole tower with a 7-by-7-foot cab was added, along with a replacement log cabin.1 The Kalispell Daily Inter Lake reported that September that the Forest Service was putting up a 70-foot fire lookout on Pinkham ridge, a line Forest Lookouts quotes.2 The two heights do not match, so the sources disagree.1,2

In 1949 a 41-foot L-4 tower of treated timber was built.1 Firelookout.com says the tower was gone by 1981, and the Montana list marks it gone too.1,3

The firelookout.com page gives no publication date, but it says the replacement log cabin is still there.1 No source we read says more about the site today, or whether visitors can reach it. Ask the Kootenai National Forest before going.

  1. Pinkham Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/pinkham.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Pinkham Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/pinkham-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: 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, 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.