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Fire lookout · Jefferson/ Powell County, Montana

Thunderbolt Mountain

CCC-built 20-foot pole tower finished in 1937 on Thunderbolt Mountain near Deer Lodge; destroyed or removed 1965-66; its Jack Mountain replacement was torn down in 2011.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Gone since 1965-66; no source describes what, if anything, remains at the Thunderbolt 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 tower20-foot pole L-4 tower with a glass enclosureThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
20 ft (6.1 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Helena and Deerlodge National Forests
Land
Federal land
Location
Jefferson/ Powell County, Montana
Coordinates
46.32900, −112.45402
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-thunderbolt-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 4.3 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 BuiltBuilt by the Thunderbolt CCC camp; work began July 1937 and was completed that fallSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1938 First staffedManned by July 1938, in preparation for prevention control, along with Haystack lookoutSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. No record between 1938 and 1965
  4. 1965 Destroyedfirelookout.com says destroyed in 1965Source: firelookout.com
  5. 1965 Replaced by a new structureJack Mountain tower, a separate site, built in 1965 as the replacementSources: montanalookouts.weebly.com, firelookout.com
  6. 1966 RemovedJanuary 1966 item says the old station was removed when the new Jack Mountain tower replaced itSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  7. No record between 1966 and 2011
  8. 2011 EventThe Jack Mountain replacement was torn down in 2011; this is a different structure on a different peakSource: firelookout.com
  9. 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.

Thunderbolt Mountain's lookout was a 20-foot pole tower with a glass-enclosed cab, on a peak about 14 miles east-southeast of Deer Lodge, Montana.1,2 Firelookout.com places it in the Helena and Deerlodge national forests, in Powell and Jefferson counties.1

The Civilian Conservation Corps built it. Work began in the summer of 1937, and the structure was finished that fall.2 A telephone line and trail were run to the site that year, and the plans included living quarters for the lookout crew.2

Sources disagree on the elevation. Firelookout.com gives 8,597 feet.1 Newspaper items from 1937 give 8,000 feet, 8,400 feet and 9,400 feet.2

In July 1938 both the Thunderbolt and Haystack lookouts were staffed to get ready for prevention control.2

Firelookout.com says the tower was destroyed in 1965.1 A January 1966 item quoted on montanalookouts.weebly.com reports that a new tower on Jack Mountain, north of Basin, replaced the Thunderbolt station, which was unsafe and was removed.2 That replacement, a 53-foot treated-timber tower, was built in 1965 and torn down in 2011.3 Jack Mountain is a separate peak, so that tower was never the original Thunderbolt lookout.2,3

No source we read describes the Thunderbolt Mountain site today, including whether anything remains or whether the public can reach it.

  1. Thunderbolt Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/thunderboltmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Thunderbolt Mountain - Forest Lookouts, montanalookouts.weebly.com, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/thunderbolt-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Jack Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/jackmtn.html (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: height, 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.