FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana

Tepee Mountain

Kootenai NF lookout in Lincoln County: a pole L-4 tower listed for 1934 and now gone; sources give no removal date and do not describe the summit today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone; no removal date or cause given in any source read

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 towerpole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1934
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Kootenai National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Lincoln County, Montana
Coordinates
48.65634, −115.94696
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-tepee-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 4.2 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 BuiltRecord lists a pole L-4 tower for 1934Source: firelookout.com
  2. TodayGoneThe lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. When it came down is not recorded.

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.

Tepee Mountain lies about 11 miles north-northwest of Troy, in Lincoln County and the Kootenai National Forest, at an elevation of 5,761 feet.1 A Forest Service list of local landmark names places the mountain in the Yaak River Valley, and its entry notes that Native people once pitched tepees near the mountain's base, at the spring now called Tepee Springs.2

The site's record gives a pole L-4 tower and dates it to 1934.1 The record marks the tower as gone, and it gives no date or cause for the removal.1

No source read for this story describes what remains on the summit today.1,2 None says whether the site is open to the public, so anyone curious about it should ask the Kootenai National Forest office before heading out to look.1,2

  1. Tepee Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/tepeemtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Source of Local Landmark Names, USDA Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/media/55616 (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, 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.