FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Powell County, Montana

White River Butte

Powell County, MT 10-foot pole L-4 tower on the Flathead NF, dated 1937; abandoned and gone; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Abandoned and gone; no source describes what, if anything, remains at the 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 tower10' pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Powell County, Montana
Coordinates
47.55213, −113.28569
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-white-river-butte

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 3.8 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 Built10-foot pole tower of the L-4 typeSource: firelookout.com
  2. 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.

White River Butte was a fire lookout in Powell County, Montana, on the Flathead National Forest.1,2 The Forest Lookouts page gives its location as 21N-13W-28, and the Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list places it at 47.55213 north, 113.28569 west.2,3

Firelookout.com dates the lookout to 1937, when it was a 10-foot pole tower of the L-4 type.1 The Sanders County Ledger describes that design as a 14-by-14-foot wood-frame cab with windows on every side, set either on the ground or raised on a pole or timber tower.4 The same firelookout.com record says the White River Butte tower was abandoned and is now gone.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list also marks it as a gone tower.3

No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it.

  1. White River Butte Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/whiteriverbutte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. White River Butte - Forest Lookouts, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/white-river-butte.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Remember When?, Sanders County Ledger, https://www.scledger.net/story/2021/08/19/communities/remember-when/6635.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.