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Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

Schmitz Mountain

Also known as Schmitz

Schmitz Mountain, Sanders County, Montana: 72-foot steel L-4 tower built 1935 on the Flathead Indian Reservation, named staff in 1955 and 1959, listed gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com marks the tower Gone; firelookout.org lists Tower Gone; no removal date in these sources.

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 tower72' steel tower with L-4 cab quartersThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
72 ft (21.9 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead Indian Agency
Land
Unknown
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.55891, −114.54568
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-schmitz-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 its recorded height.

Downloads about 3.4 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. 1935 Built72-foot steel tower with L-4 cab quarters (firelookout.com)Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1955
  3. 1955 StaffedJuly 24, 1955 Missoulian item, quoted on Forest Lookouts page: woman in charge with her husband for the past 19 yearsSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1959 StaffedJuly 1959 Char-Koosta item, quoted on Forest Lookouts page: named person again the lookout at the Schmitz locationSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. 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 (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).

Story

Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.

Schmitz Mountain sits about seven miles southeast of Hot Springs, on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Sanders County, Montana, at an elevation of 4,958 feet.1 The station had a 72-foot steel tower with L-4 cab quarters, which firelookout.com dates to 1935.1 The Forest Lookouts page lists the station under the Flathead Indian Agency.2

A July 24, 1955 item, quoted on the Forest Lookouts page, profiles the woman in charge. It says she was better known as "Lookout Annie," and that she and her husband had run the station for 19 years.2 A July 1959 item from Char-Koosta, also quoted there, names the person who again held the Schmitz lookout.2

The two sources give different distances. firelookout.com puts the site seven miles southeast of Hot Springs, while the 1955 item puts it about twenty miles by road southeast of Hot Springs, and spells the station "Schmidt Lookout." The sources do not say whether they measure the distance the same way.1,2

Both firelookout.com and the firelookout.org list mark the tower as gone.1,3 No source describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether it is open to visitors.1,2,3

  1. Schmitz Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/schmitz.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Schmitz - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts (montanalookouts.weebly.com), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/schmitz.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana lookouts list, firelookout.org, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (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: 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, height, 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.