FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Reid Divide

Flathead County L-4 lookout built 1938 and abandoned 1954, later removed; one source gives an R-1 cab, and no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1954 per firelookout.com; Forest Lookouts says removed, with no date given

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 towerL-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1938
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.34648, −114.59392
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-reid-divide

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

  1. 1938 BuiltFirelookout.com: 1938 L-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1938 and 1954
  3. 1954 AbandonedFirelookout.com: abandoned 1954Source: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

Reid Divide was a lookout in the Flathead National Forest, about 12 miles southwest of Whitefish in Flathead County, Montana, at an elevation of 5,928 feet.1

Firelookout.com dates the tower to 1938 and calls it an L-4 design.1 One Forest Lookouts page describes a crow's nest in a tree, with a tent camp and an L-4 lookout house.2 A second Forest Lookouts page for the same lookout describes a tower of round, native timber with an R-1 cab, so the sources disagree on the cab.3

Firelookout.com says the lookout was abandoned in 1954.1 Forest Lookouts marks it as removed.2

Firelookout.com also says a crow's nest two miles east of the lookout is still there.1 No source describes the tower site itself today, and none says whether the public can reach the ridge.

  1. Reid Divide Fire Lookout Tower, Rex's Fire Lookout Page (firelookout.com), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/reiddivide.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Reid Divide, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/reid-divide1.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Reid Divide, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/reid-divide.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: design, 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.