FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Tuchuck Mountain

Flathead County, MT lookout: Roy Davis staffed it in 1930 (Forest history); firelookout.com dates an L-4 cab to 1931 and destruction to 1957. Site today undocumented.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Listed as gone; firelookout.com says destroyed in 1957, the Forest Lookouts page says removed; no source describes the site today

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 cabL-4 cab (per firelookout.com)The design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1930
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.97622, −114.67490
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-tuchuck-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 4.1 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

  1. 1930 BuiltLookout building assembled from pre-cut materials later in the 1930 season; firelookout.com dates its L-4 cab to 1931Sources: montanalookouts.weebly.com, fs.usda.gov
  2. 1930 First staffedRoy Davis's first season; the trail crew had built a phone line to the point and nothing elseSource: fs.usda.gov
  3. No record between 1930 and 1957
  4. 1957 Destroyedfirelookout.com: Destroyed 1957; the Forest Lookouts page says Removed with no dateSources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. 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.

Tuchuck Mountain stands at 7,751 feet in Flathead County, about 22 miles northwest of Polebridge, on the Flathead National Forest.1 Its time as a lookout began in 1930.2 A history of the Flathead National Forest says Roy Davis arrived that season, the first one the peak was used as a lookout, and found that the trail crew's phone line to the point was the only improvement.2

Davis set up a stand for a map and an alidade, hooked up a portable telephone, and cut and hauled up a ridge pole and tent supports.2 Later that summer, precut materials and plans reached the summit, and two men assembled a lookout building.2 Davis slept one night in it before leaving at the close of the season.2

The Forest Lookouts page gives the same first-season sequence, saying the lookout house was built from precut materials brought up to the site. It lists the site as removed, with no date.3

Firelookout.com gives a different account. It dates an L-4 cab to 1931 and says it was destroyed in 1957.1 The Forest history supports 1930 for the building, which leaves the 1931 date unexplained.2 The two sources also disagree on the fate: one says destroyed, the other removed.1,3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether visitors may go up. Ask the forest before planning a visit.

  1. Tuchuck Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/tuchuck.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Trails of the Past, history of the Flathead National Forest, USDA Forest Service, https://fs.usda.gov/sites/nfs/files/r01/flathead/publication/trails-past.pdf (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Tuchuck Mountain - FOREST LOOKOUTS, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/tuchuck-mountain.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: 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, 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.