FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Mineral County, Montana

Taft Peak

Mineral County L-4 cab dated 1937 and gone by 1960. Sources disagree on location (Lolo Pass vs coordinates). No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone in 1960; the sources disagree on where the site lies

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
Ground-level cabL-4 cabThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Unknown
Land
Unknown
Location
Mineral County, Montana
Coordinates
47.44855, −115.61179
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-taft-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 4.0 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. 1937 BuiltL-4 cab (firelookout.com listing)Source: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1937 and 1960
  3. 1960 RemovedListing reads 'Gone 1960' with no cause givenSource: 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.

Taft Peak had an L-4 cab, and a listing dates it to 1937.1 The Forest Service describes the L-4 as a 14-by-14-foot pre-cut house, produced between 1929 and 1953.2

The sources do not agree on where the site lies. The firelookout.com listing places it four miles east of Lolo Pass, on the Lolo National Forest in Mineral County.1 The association gives coordinates of 47.44855 north and 115.61179 west.3 Lolo Pass, on the Idaho–Montana border, lies at about 46.635 north and 114.580 west, more than 100 km from those coordinates, so the two descriptions do not agree.4 Until someone checks the location, the exact spot is uncertain.

The association's list calls the site a ground lookout that is gone.3 The listing gives 1960 as the year the cab was gone.1

No source describes the Taft Peak site today or says whether the public can reach it.

  1. Taft Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/taftpeak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Lookout Styles, USDA Forest Service, Nez Perce National Forest, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/259212 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Lolo Pass (Idaho–Montana), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolo_Pass_(Idaho%E2%80%93Montana) (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, status, 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.