Fire lookout · Lincoln County, Montana
Thunder Mountain
Lincoln County, MT tower on the Kootenai NF, 13 miles west of Yaak: a 30-foot pole L-4 tower from 1940, gone in the 1970s. No source describes the site today.
- Gone
- Access unknown
- Verified
Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone in the 1970s according to firelookout.com; the state list also marks it gone.
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 tower, L-4 designThe design: L-4
- Built of
- Not recorded
- Built
- 1940
- Height
- 30 ft (9.1 m)
- Elevation
- Unknown
- Agency
- Kootenai National Forest
- Land
- Unknown
- Location
- Lincoln County, Montana
- Coordinates
- 48.80818, −116.00056
- Registers
- Not on a lookout register
- This entry
- VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
- Firefinder id
us-mt-thunder-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 its recorded height.
Downloads about 3.9 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
- 1940 Built30' pole L-4 tower, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
- No record between 1940 and 1970
- 1970 RemovedSource gives only the decade ('Gone 1970s'); 1970 stands in for the 1970s, not a dated eventSource: 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.
Thunder Mountain sits 13 miles west of Yaak, in the Kootenai National Forest of Lincoln County, Montana, at an elevation of 6,011 feet.1 In 1940 the site had a 30-foot pole tower of the L-4 design.1
Firelookout.com says the tower was gone in the 1970s.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's state list also marks it as a gone tower, at 48.80818 north and 116.00056 west.2
Montana has a second Thunder Mountain lookout, in Ravalli County, and it is a separate site.2 The Ravalli County tower was also a 30-foot pole L-4 design, erected in 1940 and destroyed in 1975.3 The two entries share a design and a build year, so the sites are easy to mix up.1,3
No source we read describes what remains on the summit today, or whether the site is open to visitors.
- Thunder Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/thundermtn335.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
- Thunder Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://firelookout.com/mt/thundermtn.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
- Thunder Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower (Ravalli County page) (firelookout.com) (opens another site)
- FFLA Montana lookout list (firelookout.org) (opens another site)
- Thunder Mtn. 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.