Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana
Schley Mountain
Mineral County ground lookout with an L-4 cab dated 1938 and marked gone; no source describes what remains on the peak.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Marked gone by firelookout.com and the FFLA list; no source describes what remains.
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
- Trail
- A hiking trail rises gently from a parking lot toward a rocky summit; an easy off-trail scramble leads to the true peak, according to Wild Montana.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1938
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Lolo National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Mineral County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 46.80977, −114.77129
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-schley-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 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
- 1938 BuiltL-4 cab dated 1938 on firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
- TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.
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.
Schley Mountain is a peak in Mineral County, Montana, about 15 miles north-northwest of Lolo Pass.1 The firelookout.com entry names the Lolo National Forest, gives an elevation of 7,324 feet, and dates an L-4 cab to 1938.1 A later note on the same entry reads "Emergency 1960s," and the page does not explain it.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the lookout as gone.2
A trail guide describes a hike from a parking lot that rises gently toward a rocky summit, and says an easy off-trail scramble leads to the true peak.3 The same guide describes the trail as mostly wooded, with views of the Great Burn and Mission Mountains.3 No source I could reach describes what, if anything, remains of the lookout today.
- Schley Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/schleymtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana fire lookouts list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Trail of the Week: Schley Mountain Trail, Wild Montana, https://wildmontana.org/2022/08/03/community/trail-of-the-week-schley-mountain-trail/ (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, visiting details, 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
- Trail of the Week: Schley Mountain Trail (Wild Montana) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Schley 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.