FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Beaverhead County, Montana

Selway Mountain

A 1932 L-4 cab on a log crib, a 1942 telephone line, and a tower the sources date differently; one source reports its 1976 destruction.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. One source says the tower was destroyed in 1976. No source describes what remains on the summit.

Visit & stay

Gone: site only. The lookout no longer stands, so there is nothing to climb or rent. You may still be able to visit the site.

Access

Open to the public. A listed trail runs from Reservoir Lake Campground to Selway Mountain.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
2.0-mile trail from Reservoir Lake Campground to Selway Mountain

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a towerL-4 cab on a log crib base, later a 30-foot L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1932
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Beaverhead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Beaverhead County, Montana
Coordinates
45.14568, −113.45618
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-selway-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 3.9 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. 1932 BuiltL-4 cab on a log crib baseSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1941 Replaced by a new structurefirelookout.com says a 30-foot L-4 tower replaced the cab; the 1942 Dillon papers describe a tower still being erected, so the date is disputedSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1942 EventTelephone line run up Bloody Dick Creek to the lookout, reported completed in late June 1942Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. No record between 1942 and 1976
  5. 1976 DestroyedTower destroyed according to firelookout.com; no second source foundSource: firelookout.com
  6. 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.

Selway Mountain, in Beaverhead County about 32 miles south of Wisdom, had a fire lookout from 1932, when an L-4 cab was set on a log crib base.1 In 1942 two Dillon newspapers reported a telephone line running up Bloody Dick Creek to the lookout, along with a new tower meant to improve fire detection.2 Until that line was finished, the only contact with the station had been a short-wave radio link.2

The sources disagree on the tower's date and height. The fire lookout website says a 30-foot L-4 tower replaced the cab in 1941.1 The 1942 papers describe a tower still being erected that summer, and give its height first as 30 feet and then as 39 feet.2 We could not settle which account is right.

The same website gives 1976 as the year the tower was destroyed.1 It is the only source we found for that date.

A trail listing describes a 2.0-mile trail from Reservoir Lake Campground to Selway Mountain.3 It also says the mountain once had a lookout, and that its top gives a fine look at the surrounding country.3 No source we found describes what, if anything, remains of the tower on the summit.

  1. Selway Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/selwaymtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Selway Mountain, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), quoting the Dillon Daily Tribune and Dillon Examiner of May and June 1942, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/selway-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Selway Mountain Trail, Southwest Montana, https://southwestmt.com/listings/selway-mountain-trail/ (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: height, 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, height, status, agency, access, 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.