Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana
Pot Mountain
Flathead NF L-4 tower built 1937, abandoned 1949; firelookout.com calls the site ruins while the FFLA list marks it gone; no source describes it today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1949; firelookout.com page says ruins, while the FFLA Montana list marks it gone. No source describes the ruins today
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
- Type
- Cab on a towerL-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1937
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Flathead National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Flathead County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.93110, −113.17933
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-pot-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 3.7 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
- 1937 BuiltL-4 tower, per firelookout.com pageSource: firelookout.com
- 1949 AbandonedAbandoned 1949, per firelookout.com pageSource: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Pot Mountain's lookout was an L-4 tower in the Flathead National Forest, 16 miles east of the Spotted Bear ranger station in Flathead County, Montana.1 The firelookout.com page gives its elevation as 7,674 feet and dates the tower to 1937.1 Working with the U.S. Forest Service, the Forest Fire Lookout Association completed a national inventory that found more than 8,000 lookouts in 49 states at one time.2
The page says the tower was abandoned in 1949 and that the site is now ruins.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the tower gone and places it at 47.93110, -113.17933.3 The page's word "ruins" suggests something is still on the ground, while the list says the tower is gone.1,3
No source we read describes what the ruins consist of today. Anyone thinking of visiting should ask the Flathead National Forest about access before going, and should not expect a standing tower.
- Pot Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/potmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Welcome to the FFLOS, Former Fire Lookout Sites, http://firetower.org/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- 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
- Welcome to the FFLOS! (Former Fire Lookout Sites (firetower.org)) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Pot Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.