Fire lookout · Sanders County, Montana
Thompson Peak
Sanders County lookout near Hot Springs: a 30-foot pole L-4 tower listed for 1934 and gone in 1965. A Thompson peak near Superior, quoted on the montanalookouts page, may be a different site.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone in 1965; no source describes the summit now
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 tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1934
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Lolo National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Sanders County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 47.75728, −114.84607
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-thompson-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
- 1934 BuiltRecord lists a 30-foot pole L-4 tower for 1934Source: firelookout.com
- No record between 1934 and 1965
- 1965 RemovedRecord marks the tower gone in 1965; how it came down is not statedSource: 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.
Thompson Peak stands in Sanders County, about 13 miles northwest of Hot Springs, in the Lolo National Forest, at an elevation of 7,460 feet.1 The site's record places a 30-foot pole L-4 tower there in 1934.1 The same entry marks the tower as gone in 1965 and gives no detail about how it came down.1
One detail survives in the record: a crow's nest about three miles west, on Cook, is listed as still there.1 It sits three miles from the peak, so it is not on the summit.1
Sanders County is not the only place with a Thompson Peak.2 The state list shows a separate Thompson Peak in Mineral County, with a three-story cab still standing.2 One Montana history site files a Thompson Peak under Sanders County, yet it also quotes a June 1947 newspaper item about a Thompson peak near Superior, so some of its details may describe a different peak.3
No source read for this story describes the Sanders County summit today.1,2,3 None says whether the site is open to visitors.1,2,3
- Thompson Peak Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/thompsonpeak345.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Thompson Peak, Forest Lookouts (Montana), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/thompson-peak.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
- Thompson Peak, Forest Lookouts (Montana) (montanalookouts.weebly.com) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Thompson 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.