FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana

Sheep Mountain

L-4 cab built 1929 about 7 miles west of Superior, abandoned 1946 and destroyed 1952; sources disagree on the county.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1952, according to firelookout.com.

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
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Missoula County, Montana
Coordinates
47.18064, −115.05476
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-sheep-mountain-2

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

  1. 1929 BuiltL-4 cab built in 1929Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1929 and 1946
  3. 1946 AbandonedAbandoned in 1946Source: firelookout.com
  4. 1952 DestroyedDestroyed in 1952Source: firelookout.com
  5. 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.

A lookout on Sheep Mountain, an L-4 cab put up in 1929, stood about 7 miles west of Superior, Montana.1 The firelookout.com entry dates its abandonment to 1946 and its destruction to 1952, and gives its elevation as 6,723 feet.1 The page heading gives its dates as 1929 to 1952.1 The entry places it in the Lolo National Forest.1 The two sources disagree on the county. The firelookout.com entry says Mineral County, while the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list puts the coordinates 47.18064, -115.05476 in Missoula County.1,2 The same list has other lookouts called Sheep Mountain, so the name alone does not settle which one is meant.2

No source I could reach describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the land is open to visitors.

  1. Sheep Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sheepmtn381.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana fire lookouts list, Forest Fire Lookout Association, 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. 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.