Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana
Siegel Mountain
Sanders County Siegel Mountain tower, a 50-foot L-4 dated 1936 in the Lolo NF; destroyed 1965 per firelookout.com; FFLA lists it gone. No staffing or site-today source.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. destroyed 1965 per firelookout.com; FFLA lists it as a tower that is gone
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
- Type
- Cab on a tower50-foot L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1936
- Height
- 50 ft (15.2 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Lolo National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Sanders County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.29651, −114.73576
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-siegel-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 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
- 1936 Builtfirelookout.com dates the 50-foot L-4 tower to 1936; the Missoulian reported the station under construction in October 1936Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
- No record between 1936 and 1965
- 1965 Destroyedfirelookout.com says destroyed 1965; no cause givenSource: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Siegel Mountain stands about seven miles south-southeast of Paradise, Montana, in Sanders County, inside the Lolo National Forest.1 Firelookout.com describes its lookout as a 50-foot L-4 tower built in 1936.1
In October 1936 the Missoulian reported that Forest Service workers, with CCC crews, were putting up a lookout on the peak, and that Paradise would fall within its observation area.2
The sources spell the name in different ways.1,2 The newspaper wrote Seigle, while firelookout.com uses Siegel.1,2
Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1965.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list marks the Sanders County peak as a tower that is gone.3
No source I read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.1,3
- Siegel Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://firelookout.com/mt/siegelmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Siegal Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Sanders County entry), montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/siegal-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (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, 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
- Siegel Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower (firelookout.com) (opens another site)
- Siegal Mountain (Sanders County entry) (Forest Lookouts, montanalookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Siegel 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.