Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana
Sugarloaf Mountain
Lincoln County lookout in the Kootenai National Forest with a 1930 L-4 cab, abandoned in 1942; the Montana list marks it gone.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone; no source describes what remains on the mountain today
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
- Type
- Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1930
- Height
- Unknown
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kootenai National Forest (named on the firelookout.com page; role not stated)
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Lincoln County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 48.36117, −115.11780
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-sugarloaf-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
- 1930 BuiltPage dates the L-4 cab to 1930Source: firelookout.com
- 1942 AbandonedPage says 'Abandoned 1942'Source: firelookout.com
- 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 (opens another site) (click the spot there to list them, with dates and downloads).
Story
Researched 10 Oct 2026, fact-checked.
Sugarloaf Mountain is a lookout site about 20 miles east of Libby, in Lincoln County, at an elevation of 5,432 feet.1 The page also names the Kootenai National Forest, with no role stated.1
The page dates the L-4 cab to 1930 and says the lookout was abandoned in 1942.1 Its page title identifies it as a cabin, and the Montana list gives its type as ground.1,2
The page marks the lookout gone but gives no date for that.1 The list agrees that the site is gone and places it at 48.36117, -115.11780.2
No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the mountain today, and none says whether the public can visit the site.
- Sugarloaf Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sugarloafmtn335.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
Sources
- Forest Fire Lookout Association (FFLA) - US lookout lists (opens another site) 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
- firelookout.com -- Rex Kamstra's Forest Fire Lookout Page (opens another site) 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
- 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
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Sugarloaf Mtn. on firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra) (opens another site)
Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.