FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Flathead County, Montana

Whitefish Mountain

Also known as Whitefish

Whitefish Mountain lookout, Flathead NF: 1938 pole tower destroyed 1974; its 1978 steel successor, moved from Ingalls, was removed in 1993 to private land and still stands.

Private land

No public access. Please do not trespass; view it only from public land. The relocated tower stands on private property near Whitefish, per the Forest Fire Lookout Association list and the 2022 Whitefish Pilot article. No public access is described.

Moved: The structure was moved. The map shows where it stands now; the timeline says where it came from. The 1938 tower was destroyed in 1974; the 1978 steel tower was moved in 1993 to private land near Whitefish and stands there

Visit & stay

Not rentable. As far as we know, this lookout cannot be booked for overnight stays.

Access

Private land. See the warning at the top of this page.

Can you climb it?
Unknown
Road to the top?
Unknown
Staffing
Unknown

Facts

Status
Moved
Type
Cab on a tower1938: 50' pole L-4 tower; 1978 replacement: 35' steel 7x7' tower moved from the Ingalls lookoutThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1938
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest (original lookout)
Land
Federal land
Location
Flathead County, Montana
Coordinates
48.46008, −114.33863
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-whitefish-mountain

View from the cab

What you see from the 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.

The structure was moved. This view is from the position Firefinder shows for this record, at a typical height for a lookout like it.

Downloads about 3.9 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. 1938 Built50-foot pole L-4 tower on Whitefish Mountain, about three miles north of WhitefishSource: firelookout.com
  2. 1952 EventVandals broke into the lookout, removed the telephone batteries and scattered food from the food boxSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1952 StaffedLookout couple listed (Mr. and Mrs. Richard Hall)Source: firelookout.com
  4. 1954 FireRoadside fire between Whitefish and the lookout, blamed on campers; discovered and put out by lookout Walter StickneySource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1957 StaffedLookout couple listed (Mr. and Mrs. D. A. Bollinger)Source: firelookout.com
  6. 1958 StaffedLookout couple listed (Mr. and Mrs. Edward Wood)Source: firelookout.com
  7. 1965 Last staffedLast lookout couple listed (Mr. and Mrs. Kendall Workman); not a confirmed final yearSource: firelookout.com
  8. 1974 DestroyedOriginal 50-foot pole tower destroyed; no cause given in the sources readSource: firelookout.com
  9. 1978 Moved35-foot steel 7x7 tower moved from the Ingalls lookout to Stoltz Lumber Company land about a mile east of Big MountainSources: firelookout.com, summitpost.org
  10. No record between 1978 and 1993
  11. 1993 RemovedRemoved to private property about three miles southeast of WhitefishSource: firelookout.com
  12. TodayMovedThe structure was moved. The map shows where it stands now; the timeline says where it came from.

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.

The Whitefish Mountain lookout stood about three miles north of Whitefish, in Flathead County, Montana, on Flathead National Forest land.1,2 Its first tower, built in 1938, was a 50-foot pole tower of the L-4 type.1

The firelookout.com record names lookout couples in 1952, 1957, 1958 and 1965.1 In June 1952 vandals broke into the lookout, took the batteries out of the telephone and left the food box open, its contents scattered about.3 In July 1954 a roadside fire between Whitefish and the lookout was blamed on campers.3 Walter Stickney, the lookout, spotted the fire while he was out fetching water and put it out himself.3

The first tower was destroyed in 1974.1 In 1978 a 35-foot steel tower, moved from the Ingalls lookout, was set up about a mile east on Stoltz Lumber Company land.1,4

Sources disagree about its height. The 2022 Whitefish Pilot article describes a 40-foot lookout that was manned for years and sat on the south face of the Whitefish Range, not far from the summit of Big Mountain.5 Firelookout.com gives 35 feet for the steel tower set up in 1978.1 SummitPost gives 35 feet for the Ingalls Mountain lookout, which it says was moved to that site in 1978.4 The Pilot says the site was Forest Service land that the F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber Co. had originally given to the agency.5 After the tower was declared surplus, a private owner took it home instead of letting it be scrapped.5

Firelookout.com says the tower was moved in 1993 to private property about three miles southeast of Whitefish.1

The Pilot found the tower standing near the driveway of a rural Whitefish home, where trees in the yard, taller than the tower, block the views.5 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists it as a relocated Whitefish Mountain tower, still standing, with its location marked private.2 No source we read describes what, if anything, remains at the original site.

  1. Whitefish Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/whitefishmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Whitefish - Forest Lookouts, Rex's Fire Lookout Page, https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/whitefish.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Ingalls Mountain (MT), SummitPost, https://www.summitpost.org/ingalls-mountain-mt/517288 (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. History lives on through former Stoltze vice president, Whitefish Pilot, https://whitefishpilot.com/news/2022/aug/24/lookout-tower-among-historic-artifacts-owned-forme/ (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, access, 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.