FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead/ Lake County, Montana

Thunderbolt Mountain

Flathead/Lake County, MT lookout site on the Flathead NF: a log cabin listed for 1920 and an L-4 cab for 1948, both gone. No source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Marked gone by firelookout.com and by the Forest Fire Lookout Association state list, which files it under Ground.

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
Ground-level cablog cabin (1920), then L-4 cab (1948)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1920
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Unknown
Location
Flathead/ Lake County, Montana
Coordinates
47.86567, −113.67555
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-thunderbolt-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 4.3 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. 1920 BuiltLog cabin listed for 1920, per firelookout.comSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1920 and 1948
  3. 1948 BuiltL-4 cab listed for 1948; the source does not say whether it replaced the cabinSource: firelookout.com
  4. 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.

Thunderbolt Mountain stands 8 miles southwest of the Spotted Bear Ranger Station, in the Flathead National Forest. The listing places it in Flathead/Lake County, Montana, at an elevation of 7,910 feet.1

Firelookout.com lists a log cabin on the peak in 1920, followed by an L-4 cab in 1948.1 The same listing also names another L-4 cab, two miles to the south, on Gildart.1 The listing marks the lookout as gone.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's state list files the site under "Ground" and also marks it gone, at 47.86567 north and 113.67555 west.2

Montana has a second Thunderbolt Mountain, in Jefferson and Powell counties, and it is a separate site.2

No source we read describes what remains on the peak today, or whether it is open to visitors.

  1. Thunderbolt Mtn. Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/thunderboltmtn369.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. 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. 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.