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Fire lookout · Lewis & Clark County, Montana

Silver King Mountain

Helena NF 30-ft pole lookout dated 1941 (a 2003 item says 1930s), staffed in 1941, burned in the 2003 Snow-Talon Fire; a 2016 blog found debris on the summit.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Burned in the 2003 Snow-Talon Fire. A 2016 blog found fire debris on the summit.

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. A 2016 blog describes a maintained trail to the summit. No source gives official visiting rules.

Road to the top?
Unknown
Trail
Reached from the Indian Meadows Trailhead via Copper Creek Road, per a 2016 blog

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower, L-4 type (firelookout.com)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1941
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Helena National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lewis & Clark County, Montana
Coordinates
47.11458, −112.52808
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-silver-king-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. 1941 Builtfirelookout.com gives 1941; a 2003 item quoted on the Montana lookouts site says built in the 1930sSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1941 StaffedFire lookout Clovis Jauron in the 1941 fire season (November 16, 1941 item)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1948 EventJuly 10, 1948 item (Independent Record): a contracted plane would replace the lookout formerly placed on Silver KingSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1958 EventSeptember 4, 1958 item: a three-day ride reached the lookout; riders were told the wind never dropped below 15 mph thereSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1958 and 2003
  6. 2003 BurnedLost in the Snow-Talon Fire during the 2003 seasonSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.org
  7. 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.

Silver King Mountain's lookout stood about 13 miles northeast of Lincoln, in the Helena National Forest, at an elevation of 7,771 feet.1

Firelookout.com dates the 30-foot pole tower, of the L-4 type, to 1941.1 A 1939 newspaper item, quoted on the Montana lookouts site, names Silver King mountain among the points for which a need was shown.2 A 2003 item quoted there calls the lookout historic and says it was built in the 1930s, so the sources disagree about when it went up.2

A November 1941 item quoted there names Clovis Jauron as the fire lookout who took two days' worth of supplies with him to put out a blaze.2 A mother bear, the item says, kept him up a tree for half a day while the timber burned.2

In July 1948 the Independent Record reported that a contracted plane would replace the lookout formerly placed on Silver King, which suggests the post was no longer staffed by then.2 In 1958 a three-day ride reached the lookout, and riders were told the wind there never dropped below 15 miles an hour.2

Firelookout.com says the tower burned in a 2003 forest fire.1 An August 2003 item calls it a casualty of the Snow-Talon fire and says it was lost the week before.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's 2003 Idaho/Montana chapter report names Silver King and Boulder Lake as the two lookouts lost to fire that year.3 The association's Montana list still records it as a gone tower.4

A 2016 hiker's blog says the lookout was incinerated in the Snow Talon Fire, and describes what is left on top as fire debris, among it the stove and cookware the lookout once used.5 The same post notes a Forest Service electronic site, with a silver communications structure, on the peak.5 It says the trail to the summit was still maintained, though fading in places.5 No other source reviewed describes the site today.

  1. Silver King Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/silverking.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Silver King Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Montana Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/silver-king-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Idaho/Montana Chapter Annual Report 2003, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/cc-im-2003.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Silver King Lookout: feeling the burn, Out there with Tom (blog), https://outtherewithtom.blogspot.com/2016/08/silver-king-lookout-feeling-burn.html (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 Fire Lookout Association chapter reports Gave us: dates, links Forest Fire Lookout Association, chapter and restoration-grant reports (firelookout.org) · No licence stated; facts only (dates, names, the kind of work done). Every note is our own wording and every event links to the FFLA report it comes from. Positions are copied from the NHLR, FFLOS and FFLA records. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: 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
  5. 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.