FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana

Roswell

Lincoln County, MT Kootenai NF tower built 1941 with L-4 cab, destroyed 1958; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed 1958

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 tower10-foot pole tower with L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1941
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Lincoln County, Montana
Coordinates
48.95900, −115.76937
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-roswell

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. 1941 Built10-foot pole L-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1941 and 1958
  3. 1958 DestroyedDestroyed, per firelookout.comSource: 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.

Roswell was a fire lookout on the Kootenai National Forest in Lincoln County, Montana, about 9 miles north-northwest of Yaak.1 Firelookout.com gives its elevation as 5,612 feet.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list places it at 48.95900 north and 115.76937 west, and classes it as a tower.2

A 10-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab was built there in 1941.1

Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1958.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list marks the site as gone.2

A Lincoln County list on the Forest Lookouts website names a Roswell Ridge in the Kootenai National Forest.3 It gives a legal location and no history, so we cannot tell whether it is this lookout.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the Roswell site today, or whether the public may visit it.

  1. Roswell Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/roswell.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Lincoln County, Forest Lookouts (Rex's Fire Lookout Page), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/lincoln-county.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. 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.