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Fire lookout · Lewis & Clark County, Montana

Red Mountain

Red Mountain lookout in Lewis and Clark County: a D-6 cabin dated 1929 but disputed, removed after the mid-1950s. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Cabin removed after the mid-1950s per firelookout.com. No source describes what remains at the site.

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 cabD-6 cupola cabin, set on the groundThe design: D-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Helena National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lewis & Clark County, Montana
Coordinates
47.11662, −112.73876
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-red-mountain-3

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. 1929 Builtfirelookout.com dates the D-6 cupola cabin to 1929. A 1925 item and a 1923 photo caption suggest the site was in use earlier. The sources disagree.Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com, mtmemory.org
  2. 1936 StaffedClarence Graham was a lookout on Red Mountain in 1936, per a 1938 newspaper item quoted on the Montana Lookouts page.Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1939 Replaced by a new structureA July 1939 item said the Red Mountain station would be replaced by one on Stonewall Mountain.Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1940 AbandonedAbandoned in the 1940s, per firelookout.com. 1940 is a placeholder year because the source gives only the decade.Source: firelookout.com
  5. No record between 1940 and 1955
  6. 1955 RemovedStill standing in the mid-1950s and removed since. 1955 is a placeholder year; the source gives no removal date.Source: firelookout.com
  7. 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.

Red Mountain is a lookout site in Lewis and Clark County, in the Helena National Forest.1,2 Firelookout.com places it about 11 miles north of Lincoln, Montana, and describes a D-6 cupola cabin there, built in 1929, at an elevation of 9,411 feet.1

Sources disagree on how early the site was used.1,2,3 An August 1925 newspaper item, quoted on a Montana lookout history page, says construction of a station on Red Mountain was about to begin, and that a lookout had been kept there for the past two years.2 A Forest Service photograph dated July 17, 1923 is captioned as a proposed lookout on Red Mountain.3 Its library note says the area was then part of the Missoula National Forest and joined the Helena National Forest in 1929.3

A lookout named Clarence Graham was on Red Mountain in 1936, according to a 1938 newspaper item.2 A July 1939 item said the Red Mountain station would be replaced by one on Stonewall Mountain, and that wood and water had to be packed in several miles to supply it.2

Firelookout.com says the cabin was abandoned in the 1940s, was still standing in the mid-1950s, and has since been removed.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground-level station that is gone.4 A National Geodetic Survey datasheet places a summit station about 12 miles north-northwest of Lincoln, near the site of a Forest Service lookout tower.2 The Coast and Geodetic Survey described the station in 1956, so that description does not show the site today. Its directions end with a pack of about three miles from the last truck road.2 No source describes what remains at the site now, or whether visitors can reach it.1,2,4

A different Red Mountain, 18 miles northeast of Lincoln, was a 1930s camp and is not this lookout.5

  1. Red Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/redmtn369.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Red Mountain (L&C) - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Montana Lookouts (montanalookouts.weebly.com), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/red-mountain-lc.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Proposed lookout site on Red Mountain, Montana History Portal (University of Montana Mansfield Library), https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/20371 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Red Mtn. Fire Lookout, Firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/redmtn399.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, 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.