FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana

Snowstorm Mountain

Ground lookout in the Lolo National Forest with an L-4 cab dated 1933 and destroyed in 1962. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1962. No source describes what remains on the site.

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
1933
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Sanders County, Montana
Coordinates
47.82837, −114.83757
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-snowstorm-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 a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 4.4 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. 1933 Builtfirelookout.com lists an L-4 cab under 1933Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1933 and 1962
  3. 1962 Destroyedfirelookout.com says destroyed 1962Source: 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.

Snowstorm Mountain lies in the Lolo National Forest, about 17 miles north-northwest of Hot Springs in Sanders County, at an elevation of 6,992 feet.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a ground lookout that is now gone.2

The firelookout.com page lists an L-4 cab here in 1933.1 The Sanders County Ledger describes the L-4 as a wood-frame cab with windows on every side, and says it was far and away the most popular live-in lookout.3 The same article says the cab could stand on the ground or on pole or timber towers as tall as 100 feet.3

The firelookout.com page says the cab was destroyed in 1962.1

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

  1. Snowstorm Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/snowstormmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Remember When?, Sanders County Ledger, https://www.scledger.net/story/2021/08/19/communities/remember-when/6635.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. 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.