Fire lookout · Missoula County, Montana
Sunset Peak
Missoula County, MT lookout listed as a 20' L-4 tower dated 1944 and gone by 1955; no source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone by 1955; the listing does not say how the tower left the site
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
- Cab on a tower20' L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1944
- Height
- 20 ft (6.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Lolo/Flathead National Forests
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Missoula County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.31803, −113.70171
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-sunset-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 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
- 1944 BuiltListing gives 1944 ahead of the 20' L-4 tower description; read here as the build yearSource: firelookout.com
- 1955 RemovedListed as 'Gone 1955'; the source does not say how the tower left the siteSource: 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.
Sunset Peak was a fire lookout in Missoula County, Montana, 14 miles northwest of Seeley Lake.1 A statewide list of Montana lookouts gives its coordinates as 47.31803, -113.70171 and marks the tower as gone.2
The listing dates the lookout to 1944 and describes a 20-foot L-4 tower.1 The L-4 was a 14-by-14-foot frame cab that served as living quarters and could sit on top of a tall fire tower.3 The same listing places the site in the Lolo/Flathead National Forests and records the tower as gone by 1955.1
Another Sunset Peak lookout stood in Mineral County, 8 miles southwest of St. Regis.4 That tower is listed as a 20-foot pole L-4 tower dated 1934 and destroyed in 1959, so the two are separate sites.4
No source we read describes what remains at the site today, or whether the ground is open to visitors.
- Sunset Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sunsetpeak369.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana lookout list, firelookout.org, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Definitions, National Historic Lookout Register, http://nhlr.org/definitions/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Sunset Peak Fire Lookout Tower (Mineral County), firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/sunsetpeak.html (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, 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
- Definitions, National Historic Lookout Register (National Historic Lookout Register (nhlr.org)) (opens another site)
- Sunset Peak Fire Lookout Tower (Mineral County) (firelookout.com) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Sunset Peak 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.