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Fire lookout · Lewis & Clark County, Montana

Steamboat Mountain

Gone L-4 cabin on Steamboat Mountain in the Lewis and Clark National Forest: built 1933 or 1934, abandoned 1973; no source describes the summit today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. FireLookout.com says abandoned 1973 and gone; the Forest Fire Lookout Association Montana list also marks it 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 cabL-4 cab: wood, painted white, about 14 by 14 feet and 14 feet tall (1960 survey description)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1933
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lewis and Clark National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lewis & Clark County, Montana
Coordinates
47.30687, −112.64683
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-steamboat-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 4.3 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. 1930 EventWork under way by June 19, 1930 (trail crew at work toward the planned station on the summit); trail and forest telephone line completed to the lookout camp by August 28, 1930Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1933 BuiltIndependent Record item dated December 15, 1933 reports a new lookout house built; FireLookout.com dates its L-4 cab to 1934Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1933 and 1973
  4. 1973 AbandonedFireLookout.com lists the cabin as abandoned in 1973Source: firelookout.com
  5. 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.

Steamboat Mountain sits in the Lewis and Clark National Forest.1,2 FireLookout.com puts the lookout 17 miles southwest of Augusta, but a 1960 survey description places the summit 13 miles south and 12 miles east of town, so the two sources disagree on direction.1,2

Work on the site was under way by June 1930.2 A ranger named Harris had a crew building a trail around the mountain, so people could reach the new station planned for the top.2 A forest telephone line ran from the Elk Creek Ranger Station that summer, and by late August the trail and phone line reached the lookout camp on the summit.2

The cabin itself came later.2 The Independent Record reported on December 15, 1933 that a new lookout house had been built there.2 FireLookout.com dates its L-4 cabin to 1934 instead.1 A 1960 survey describes a white-painted wood building about 14 feet square and roughly 14 feet tall.2

FireLookout.com records the cabin as abandoned in 1973.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list and FireLookout.com both mark the site as gone.1,3

None of the three sources I read describes what, if anything, remains on the summit today, or whether the site is open to visitors.1,2,3

  1. Steamboat Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, FireLookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/steamboatmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Steamboat Mountain, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/steamboat-mountain.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. 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.