FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Standard Peak

Flathead NF lookout on Standard Peak, 10 miles NNE of Whitefish, MT: D-1 cupola cabin from 1929, gone before 1956; no site description today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone prior to 1956 per firelookout.com; Forest Lookouts says removed, with no date. No source describes the site now.

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-1 cupola cabin on a platformThe design: D-1
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1929
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.54182, −114.24700
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-standard-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 4.5 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. 1929 BuiltD-1 cupola cabin on a platform, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1935 EventPanorama photos taken on August 3, per Forest LookoutsSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

The Standard Peak lookout stood about 10 miles north-northeast of Whitefish, in Flathead County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest.1,2 Ron Kemnow's page gives the survey location as 32N-21W-14.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association places the site at 48.54182, -114.24700.3

Rex Kamstra's firelookout.com page gives the elevation as 7,196 feet and dates the lookout to 1929.1 It describes a D-1 cupola cabin on a platform.1 Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts page records panorama photos taken on August 3, 1935.2

Kemnow's page says the lookout was removed, but gives no date.2 Kamstra's page says the lookout was no longer there before 1956.1 The two accounts agree, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground lookout that is gone.3

No source describes what remains at the site today, and no source says whether the public can visit it.1,2,3

  1. Standard Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/standardpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Standard Peak, Forest Lookouts, western US (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/standard-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts (by County), Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/mt-co/ (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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: agency, ownership, links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. 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.