FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Sunday Mountain

Kootenai National Forest 60-foot steel Aermotor lookout near Whitefish, MT: built 1934, staffed until 1973, removed 1975; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Tower removed in 1975; no source describes what remains at the site 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
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower60-foot steel Aermotor tower; log cabin living quarters burned in 1963 and were replaced by trailer quartersThe design: Aermotor
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
60 ft (18.3 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.59318, −114.85073
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-sunday-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 its recorded height.

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. 1934 Built60-foot steel Aermotor tower built in 1934 (firelookout.com)Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1963
  3. 1963 BurnedLog cabin living quarters burned accidentally; replaced by trailer living quarters (firelookout.com)Source: firelookout.com
  4. 1973 Last staffedStaffed until 1973 (firelookout.com)Source: firelookout.com
  5. 1975 EventJuly 25, 1975 Kootenai National Forest notice soliciting bids for excess buildings and property, including a steel lookout tower without cabin on Sunday Mountain; bids due 2 p.m. Aug. 11 (quoted from The Daily Inter Lake on Forest Lookouts)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1975 RemovedRemoved in 1975 per firelookout.com; the same year the forest offered it for saleSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  7. 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.

Sunday Mountain stands about 28 miles northwest of Whitefish, in Flathead County, at an elevation of 5,485 feet.1 The firelookout.com page lists the Kootenai National Forest as the agency, and a Forest Lookouts page places the tower on the Fortine Ranger District.1,2

The firelookout.com page describes a 60-foot steel Aermotor tower built in 1934.1 The tower was staffed until 1973.1 Accidental burning in 1963 claimed the log cabin used as living quarters, and trailers took its place.1 Skillet Mountain, five miles to the southwest, also served as a patrol point.1

In July 1975 the Kootenai National Forest asked for bids on surplus buildings and property.2 One item was a steel lookout tower without a cabin on Sunday Mountain, and bids were due by 2 p.m. on August 11.2 The firelookout.com page gives 1975 as the year the tower was removed, the same year the forest offered it for sale.1,2

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains on the mountain today, or whether the public can reach the site. A firelookout.org Montana list also marks the lookout as gone.3

  1. Sunday Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sundaymtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Sunday Mountain, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/sunday-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana fire lookouts list, firelookout.org, 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, height, 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.