FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lake County, Montana

Van Peak

Lake County, MT lookout cab in the Flathead NF, dated 1939 with a 1940 survey description; listed as gone, and no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Montana list marks it gone; firelookout.com gives no removal date or cause

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, filed as a ground structure rather than a towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1939
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Lake County, Montana
Coordinates
47.69152, −113.70085
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-van-peak

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 4.2 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. 1939 Builtfirelookout.com dates the L-4 cab to 1939Source: firelookout.com
  2. 1940 EventCoast and Geodetic Survey station description places the Forest Service lookout house on the peakSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 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.

Van Peak sits in Lake County, Montana, inside the Flathead National Forest.1,2 A Coast and Geodetic Survey description written in 1940 places the Forest Service lookout house on a high, bare peak, about seven and a half miles north-northeast of Condon Ranger Station.1 The Forest Lookouts page gives the location as township 22 North, range 16 West, section 6.1

Firelookout.com dates an L-4 cab on the peak to 1939.3 The Montana list files the site under "Ground" rather than as a tower, and gives its coordinates as 47.69152 north and 113.70085 west.2

The Montana list now marks Van Peak as gone.2

No source describes what, if anything, remains on the summit today, and none says whether the peak is open to the public.3,1,2

  1. Van Peak, Forest Lookouts, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/van-peak.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Van Peak Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/vanpeak.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.