FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Smoky Ridge

Former Flathead National Forest tower 9 miles NNE of Whitefish, Montana: a 1935 30-foot pole L-4 tower, destroyed in 1977; no source describes what remains.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1977; no source describes what, if anything, remains.

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 tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.52250, −114.25723
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-smoky-ridge

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 4.3 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 Built30-foot pole L-4 tower, on a southeast spur half a mile below the summitSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1935 and 1977
  3. 1977 DestroyedDestroyed 1977 per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

Smoky Ridge is 9 miles north-northeast of Whitefish, in the Flathead National Forest and Flathead County, Montana.1 The Montana list puts its coordinates at 48.52250 north and 114.25723 west.2

The firelookout.com page describes a 30-foot pole L-4 tower, built in 1935 on a southeast spur about half a mile below the summit.1 The page gives the elevation as 6,650 feet.1

The same page says the tower was destroyed in 1977.1 The Montana list marks it as a tower that is gone.2

Today, no source we read describes what, if anything, remains of the tower at the site, and none says whether the public may visit it.1 The page's text is brief, and it gives no reason for the 1977 destruction.1

  1. Smoky Ridge Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/smokyridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, 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, 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.