Fire lookout · Lake County, Montana
Pistol Creek Lookout
Tribally administered 53-foot timber tower with R-6 flat cab, built here about 1970 after an earlier site; the register says staffed in summer, the tribal page says only during emergencies; vandalized in 1974; registered 2022.
- Standing
- Tribal land: permission required
- Verified
Tribal land: permission required
This site is on tribal land. Ask the tribe for permission before visiting, and follow its rules. No source read gives visitor rules. The earlier permission-only entry is not confirmed by any page read.
Visit & stay
Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.
Access
Tribal land: permission required. See the warning at the top of this page.
- Can you climb it?
- Unknown
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Staffing
- Staffed during fire season
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Cab on a towerR-6 flat cab on a 53-foot treated timber towerThe design: R-6
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1970
- Height
- 53 ft (16.2 m)
- Elevation
- 6,121 ft (1,866 m)
- Agency
- Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe
- Land
- Tribal land
- Location
- Lake County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.21451, −114.02920
- Registers
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 8 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-pistol-creek
View from the cab
What you see from the 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.
Downloads about 4.3 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
- 1970 BuiltBuilt here as a 53-foot treated timber tower with R-6 flat cabSources: nhlr.org, fwrconline.csktnrd.org
- 1970 MovedOriginally constructed at another site; the first site and date are not named in the sources readSources: nhlr.org, fwrconline.csktnrd.org
- 1974 EventVandals heavily damaged the lookout over the winter; crews found it nearly destroyedSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
- 1979 StaffedNotice names a lookout with five years of duty at Pistol CreekSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1979 and 2022
- 2022 Added to the National Historic Lookout RegisterRegistered April 12, 2022 as US 1544, MT 107Source: nhlr.org
- TodayStandingIt still stands, as far as our sources know.
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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 8 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Pistol Creek Lookout stands on the Flathead Indian Reservation, eight miles south-southeast of St. Ignatius in Lake County, Montana.1,2 The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe administers it.3
The tower was not built where it stands.3 The National Historic Lookout Register says it was originally constructed at another site, and that the 53-foot treated timber tower with an R-6 flat cab was built here around 1970.3,2 None of the sources I could open names the first site or the year it went up there.
In July 1974 the Char-Koosta News reported that two of the reservation's four fire lookouts had been badly hit by vandals over the winter.4 Crews found the Pistol Creek lookout "nearly destroyed," with its stove, windows and firefinder broken.4 A 1979 Flathead Courier notice names a lookout who had five years of duty at Pistol Creek.4
The tower is still standing. The register added it on April 12, 2022, as US 1544, MT 107, and says it is staffed during the summer.3 The tribe's page says the tower is now staffed only during emergencies.2
No source I could read gives visitor rules, so ask the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe before heading up.2
- Pistol Creek Fire Lookout Tower, FireLookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/pistolcreek.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
- Fire Lookouts, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe, Division of Fish, Wildlife, Recreation, & Conservation, https://fwrconline.csktnrd.org/Fire/FireOnTheLand/FireManagement/Lookouts/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
- Pistol Creek Lookout, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/lookouts/us/mt/pistol-creek-lookout/ (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
- Pistol Creek - Forest Lookouts, Montana Lookouts (montanalookouts.weebly.com), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/pistol-creek.html (accessed 2026-10-08). ↩
Photos
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Sources
- National Historic Lookout Register (NHLR) (opens another site) Gave us: name, location, county, elevation, register numbers, agency, dates, photos, links National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org) · All rights reserved (American Resources, Inc.); facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) Gave us: type, status, register numbers, links Forest Fire Lookout Association (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts extracted only, no prose copied. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) Gave us: design, photos, 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
- Fire Lookouts on the Flathead Reservation (CSKT Fire on the Land) (opens another site) Gave us: height, ownership, access, staffing, links Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes · No licence stated; facts only. Coordinates are geocoded (OSM Nominatim) or dead-reckoned -- see extra.coord_method per record. · retrieved 4 Oct 2026
- FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) (opens another site) Gave us: 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
- Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, 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
- NHLR register entry US 1544 (nhlr.org) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Pistol Creek on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
- Pistol Creek on Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow) (opens another site)
- CSKT Fire on the Land: fire lookouts (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.