FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Spruce Mountain

30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab in the Flathead National Forest, built 1931 and abandoned in 1965. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned in 1965. 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
Cab on a tower30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1931
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.15957, −113.56026
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-spruce-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 4.1 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

  1. 1931 Builtfirelookout.com lists a 30-foot pole L-4 tower, one mile ESE of the prominent summitSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1931 and 1965
  3. 1965 Abandonedfirelookout.com says abandoned 1965Source: 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.

Spruce Mountain lies in Flathead County, Montana, about 27 miles southeast of Hungry Horse, in the Flathead National Forest, at an elevation of 6,180 feet.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a tower that is now gone.2

The firelookout.com page describes a 30-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab in 1931, set one mile east-southeast of the prominent summit, and records that the lookout was abandoned in 1965.1 The Sanders County Ledger says L-4 cabs could stand on the ground or on pole or timber towers as tall as 100 feet.3

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

  1. Spruce Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sprucemtn.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.