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Fire lookout · Flathead/ Lincoln County, Montana

Stryker Peak

Gone 10-foot pole L-4 tower on Stryker Peak in the Kootenai National Forest: built 1935, used until 1955, still standing in a 1978 photo; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Still standing in a 1978 photo; the Forest Fire Lookout Association Montana list marks the tower 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
Cab on a tower10-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1935
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead/ Lincoln County, Montana
Coordinates
48.68462, −114.69215
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-stryker-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 4.1 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. 1935 BuiltThe Forest Service built a fire lookout on the peak in 1935; FireLookout.com dates a 10-foot pole L-4 tower to 1935Sources: firelookout.com, mtmemory.org
  2. 1936 EventCCC camp members had finished two of the five and a half miles of road up Stryker Ridge to the lookout, per a September 20, 1936 Missoulian itemSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1936 and 1955
  4. 1955 AbandonedUsed until 1955; FireLookout.com says abandoned in 1955Sources: firelookout.com, mtmemory.org
  5. 1960 EventMontana DNRC lookout point about 3 miles southeast of the summit, a converted school bus with cupola; the source says only 1960s, so the year is approximateSource: firelookout.com
  6. 1969 EventStryker Ridge bus-and-cupola lookout (separate FireLookout.com record) listed as gone 1969; may be the same site as the 1960 DNRC point, not confirmed by any sourceSource: firelookout.com
  7. 1978 EventPhoto showing the tower still standingSource: 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.

Stryker Peak crowns Stryker Ridge in the Kootenai National Forest, about 24 miles northwest of Whitefish.1,2 The Montana History Portal gives its elevation as 7,338 feet.2

The Forest Service built a fire lookout on the peak in 1935.2 FireLookout.com describes a 10-foot pole L-4 tower built that year.1 Civilian Conservation Corps crews were at work on the access road, and by September 1936 they had completed two of its five and a half miles, the stretch climbing the ridge to the lookout.3

The lookout was used until 1955, when it was abandoned.1,2 A 1978 photo still shows the tower standing.1

In the 1960s the Montana DNRC set up a lookout point about 3 miles southeast of the summit, using a converted school bus with a cupola.1 A separate FireLookout.com record for Stryker Ridge dates a bus-and-cupola lookout to the 1960s and marks it gone by 1969.4 It may be the same site as the DNRC point, but the sources do not say.

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list now marks the Stryker Peak tower as gone.5

None of the sources I read describes what remains at the summit today, or whether the site can be visited.1,3,2,5

  1. Stryker Peak Fire Lookout Tower, FireLookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/strykerpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Stryker Peak, Montana History Portal, Montana Historical Society, https://www.mtmemory.org/nodes/view/128207 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Stryker Peak, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/stryker-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Stryker Ridge Fire Lookout Tower, FireLookout.com, http://firelookout.com/mt/strykerridge.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. 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.