FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Ravalli County, Montana

Thunder Mountain

Bitterroot NF 30-foot L-4 pole tower built in 1940; lookouts named 1946-1971; ended 1973-1975 per sources; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone since 1973-1975; no source describes what, if anything, remains at 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
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower30-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1940
Height
30 ft (9.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Bitterroot National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Ravalli County, Montana
Coordinates
45.57957, −114.27046
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-thunder-mountain-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 4.0 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. 1940 Built30-foot L-4 tower built in 1940Sources: firelookout.com, firelookout.com
  2. 1946 First staffedMr. and Mrs. Kenneth Hoover listed as lookout personnelSource: firelookout.com
  3. 1953 StaffedBessie Sopher listed as lookout 1953-1962 on the firelookout.com listSource: firelookout.com
  4. 1959 Staffed1959 Ravalli Republic item: Sopher returned from Thunder Mountain after a summer seasonSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1962 Staffed1962 Ravalli Republic item calls it Sopher's 12th year on this lookout, which implies a 1951 startSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  6. 1971 StaffedTom Laine listed as lookout personnel in 1971, the last name on the listSource: firelookout.com
  7. 1973 AbandonedSecond firelookout.com page says abandoned in 1973Source: firelookout.com
  8. 1975 DestroyedMain firelookout.com page says destroyed in 1975Source: firelookout.com
  9. 1975 Removedmontanalookouts.weebly.com says removed in 1975Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  10. 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.

Thunder Mountain's lookout was a 30-foot pole tower on the Bitterroot National Forest, about 16 miles south of the West Fork Ranger Station.1 It went up in 1940 and sat at an elevation of 7,699 feet.1,2 One page calls the tower wooden and the other calls it pole, but both give a 30-foot L-4 design.1,2

The firelookout.com list names lookouts from 1946 into the early 1970s. Among them are Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Hoover in 1946 and Bessie Sopher from 1953 to 1962.1 Newspaper items reprinted on montanalookouts.weebly.com describe Sopher as a longtime summer lookout.3 A 1962 item calls that season her twelfth on Thunder Mountain, which would mean she started in 1951, two years before the list first shows her in 1953.1,3

The sources disagree on the end date. One page says the tower was abandoned in 1973.2 The main firelookout.com page and the montanalookouts page both give 1975 and describe the tower as destroyed or removed.1,3

The Forest Fire Lookout Association marks the tower as gone.4 We found no source describing what remains at the site or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Thunder Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/thundermtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Thunder Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower (Ravalli County page), firelookout.com, https://firelookout.com/mt/thundermtn389.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Thunder Mountain - Forest Lookouts, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/thunder-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. 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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: agency, ownership, links Ron Kemnow's Forest Lookouts sites (westlookouts, californialookouts, idaholookouts, montanalookouts, oregonlookouts and washingtonlookouts .weebly.com) · No licence stated; facts only (county, land manager, status word, coordinates where the page's own map widget gives them, township-range-section, height and design hints, links). The site's own newspaper quotes, citations and narrative are not reproduced. · retrieved 8 Oct 2026
  4. 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

Firefinder takes facts (places, dates, numbers) from these sources and writes its own words. See all sources and licences.