Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana
Spar Peak
L-4 cab in the Kootenai National Forest, built 1930 and destroyed 1959. A hiking trail reaches the summit, where a trail guide reports lookout remnants.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1959. A trail guide reports only remnants 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.
- Road to the top?
- Unknown
- Trail
- Trail No. 324: eight-mile round trip, about 2,800 feet of gain, rated hard. Driving directions to the trailhead start at MT-56.
Facts
- Status
- Type
- Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1930
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kootenai National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Lincoln County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 48.22374, −115.98708
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-spar-peak
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 4.0 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
- 1930 Builtfirelookout.com lists an L-4 cab under 1930Source: firelookout.com
- No record between 1930 and 1959
- 1959 Destroyedfirelookout.com says destroyed 1959Source: 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.
Spar Peak lies in Lincoln County, Montana, about 18 miles south-southwest of Troy, in the Kootenai National Forest, at an elevation of 6,585 feet.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground lookout that is now gone.2
The firelookout.com page records an L-4 cab here in 1930 and says it was destroyed in 1959.1
Hiking trail No. 324 now climbs to the summit in the Cabinet Mountains.3 The trail guide gives an eight-mile round trip with about 2,800 feet of climbing, rates it hard, and gives driving directions to the trailhead from MT-56.3
The trail guide reports traces of an old lookout tower on the summit.3 Firelookout.com describes an L-4 cab, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground lookout, so the sources do not clearly agree on what stood there.1,2,3 No source I found says how much of the structure survives.
- Spar Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sparpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Spar Peak Trail #324, scotchmanpeaks.org, https://www.scotchmanpeaks.org/hiking/self-styled-hikes/spar-peak-trail-324/ (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, status, agency, 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
- Spar Peak Trail #324 (scotchmanpeaks.org) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Spar Peak 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.