FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Ravalli County, Montana

Piquett Mountain

Bitterroot National Forest cupola cabin: camp from 1921, cabin built 1928, destroyed or removed in 1966. A climbing guide describes remains on the summit.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1966 (firelookout.com); removed in 1966 (Rex's page). A climbing guide describes what appear to be remains on the summit.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. Hike from Little Boulder Creek trailhead via FR 1130; motor vehicles barred Oct 15 to Dec 1. No closure stated (SummitPost).

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Little Boulder Creek trailhead, reached by the West Fork Road to Painted Rocks Lake and FR 1130 (SummitPost).

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabcupola cabin, built 1928 (site a camp from 1921)The design: Cupola house
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1928
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Bitterroot National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Ravalli County, Montana
Coordinates
45.73182, −114.19105
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-piquett-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 4.2 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 EventEstablished as a campSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1928 BuiltCupola cabinSource: firelookout.com
  3. No record between 1928 and 1966
  4. 1966 Destroyedfirelookout.com says destroyed; Rex's Forest Lookouts page says RemovedSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.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.

Piquett Mountain rises to 8,831 feet in the Bitterroot National Forest, in Ravalli County, Montana, about 20 miles south of Darby.1 A climbing guide places it about 5 miles east-northeast of Painted Rocks Lake.2

The firelookout.com page says the site was established as a camp in 1921, and that a cupola cabin built in 1928 stood there.1

The cabin did not last. firelookout.com says it was destroyed in 1966.1 Rex's Forest Lookouts page lists it as removed in the same year.3 The two sources agree on the year but not on the verb.

A climbing guide on SummitPost says the summit still holds what looks like an old lookout's remains, among them bedsprings, nails, hardware, grounding wire for lightning control and a good deal of melted glass.2 The same page mentions a hitching post for stock animals.2 The account comes from a climber rather than a survey, so treat the details as a visitor's report.

The hike starts at the Little Boulder Creek trailhead, reached by following the West Fork Road to Painted Rocks Lake and then Forest Road 1130 along Little Boulder Creek.2 Motorized vehicles are barred from the area around Piquett Mountain between October 15 and December 1.2 No source says the summit is closed.

  1. Piquett Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/piquettmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Piquett Mountain, SummitPost, https://www.summitpost.org/piquett-mountain/306833 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Piquett Mountain - Forest Lookouts (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/piquett-mountain.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, access, visiting details, 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.