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Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

St. Patrick Peak

D-6 cupola cabin on St. Patrick Peak, Mineral County, Montana: log cabin 1919, cupola cabin 1923, newspaper staffing 1915-1940, destroyed 1965, site gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. destroyed in 1965 per firelookout.com; FFLA lists it as a ground-type lookout that is gone

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 cabD-6 cupola cabin built 1923 on a site developed with a log cabin in 1919The design: D-6
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1919
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
46.97584, −114.84695
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-st-patrick-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 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. 1915 StaffedJuly 8, 1915 Mineral Independent item names E.L. Alwayrd stationed at St. Patrick's lookout station; predates the 1919 log cabin that firelookout.com givesSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1919 Builtlog cabin, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  3. 1923 BuiltD-6 cupola cabin, per firelookout.com; a February 1, 1924 Daily Missoulian item describes constructing a lookout post the previous summerSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1936 StaffedWilliam Sutphin stationed on St. Patrick's knob as a lookout; Missoulian, September 18, 1936Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1940 StaffedLauress Fike spent the summer on the peak as a Forest Service lookout; Mineral Independent, September 19, 1940Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  6. No record between 1940 and 1965
  7. 1965 Destroyedfirelookout.com says the cabin was destroyed in 1965Source: firelookout.com
  8. 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.

St. Patrick Peak rises in Mineral County, Montana, about 15 miles south of Superior, on the Lolo National Forest.1 Firelookout.com gives its elevation as 7,124 feet.1 The page dates a log cabin on the site to 1919, and a D-6 cupola cabin to 1923.1 A February 1924 Daily Missoulian item says a man had spent the previous summer on the Lolo National Forest building a lookout post on the peak.2

Newspaper extracts on a Montana lookout history site also point to an earlier station.2 A July 8, 1915 Mineral Independent item places E.L. Alwayrd at the St. Patrick lookout.2 That is before the 1919 log cabin on firelookout.com, so the dates do not line up neatly.1,2

Staffing shows up in a few summers after that. A September 1936 Missoulian item says William Sutphin served as a lookout on St. Patrick's knob that summer. It calls him the last lookout the Forest Service brought in to that district.2 A September 1940 Mineral Independent item says Lauress Fike served as a Forest Service lookout on the peak that summer.2

Firelookout.com says the cabin was destroyed in 1965, and its page gives the site's span as 1923 to 1965.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground-type lookout that is gone.3

No source here describes what remains at the site today, or whether the public may visit the peak.1,3

  1. St. Patrick Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/stpatrickpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. St Patrick - Forest Lookouts (newspaper extracts), montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/st-patrick.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. 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, 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.