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Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Sunset Peak

Lolo National Forest tower site in Mineral County, MT: firelookout.com dates a 20-ft pole L-4 tower to 1934 and says it was destroyed in 1959; FFLA lists it gone.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed in 1959, according to firelookout.com.

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. No source we read says whether the site is open to the public.

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower20-foot pole tower, L-4 typeThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lolo National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.22550, −115.22413
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-sunset-peak-2

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 Built20-foot pole tower of the L-4 type, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1934 and 1959
  3. 1959 DestroyedDestroyed, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

Sunset Peak carried a fire lookout on the Lolo National Forest, about eight miles southwest of St. Regis in Mineral County, Montana.1

Firelookout.com dates a 20-foot pole tower of the L-4 type to 1934, and gives the site an elevation of 5,744 feet.1 The same page says the tower was destroyed in 1959.1

The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list places the site at 47.22550 north and 115.22413 west, and marks the tower as gone.2 Its structure type, a tower, matches the pole tower that firelookout.com describes.1,2

That list also has a separate Sunset Peak in Missoula County, so check the county before using the name.2

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public may visit it.1,2

  1. Sunset Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sunsetpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. 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. Firefinder research Gave us: summary, design, height, status, agency, access, staffing, 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.