Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana
Roderick
Lincoln County, MT lookout on the Kootenai NF: frame cabin 1921, 10-foot pole L-4 tower 1942, destroyed about 1975; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed 1975 (peakbagging.com says about 1975)
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 towerframe cabin (1921), then a 10-foot wood pole tower with L-4 cab (1942)The design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1921
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kootenai National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Lincoln County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 48.70500, −115.75758
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-roderick
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 4.1 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
- 1921 BuiltFrame cabin listed by firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
- No record between 1921 and 1942
- 1942 Built10-foot wood pole tower with L-4 cabSources: firelookout.com, peakbagging.com
- No record between 1942 and 1975
- 1975 DestroyedFirelookout.com gives 1975; peakbagging.com says about 1975Sources: firelookout.com, peakbagging.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.
Roderick was a fire lookout on the Kootenai National Forest in Lincoln County, Montana, about 9 miles south of Yaak.1 Firelookout.com gives its elevation as 6,600 feet.1 Peakbagging.com, which calls the peak Roderick Mountain, gives the mountain's elevation as 6,635 feet.2
Firelookout.com lists a frame cabin on the site in 1921.1 In 1942 a 10-foot wood pole tower with an L-4 cab was built.1,2
The tower was destroyed in 1975, according to firelookout.com, and about 1975 according to peakbagging.com.1,2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the site as gone.3
Peakbagging.com places the lookout on a small hill about 700 feet southwest of the mountain's high point.2 That high point has a benchmark, placed in 1963.2 The page carries a photo dated August 10, 2020, but its text does not say what the photo shows.2 No source we read describes what stands at the lookout site today, or whether the public may visit it.
- Roderick Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/roderick.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Roderick Mountain, Montana, Peakbagging.com, http://www.peakbagging.com/MTLookoutPhotos/RoderickMtn.html (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
- Roderick Mountain, Montana (Peakbagging.com) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Roderick 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.