FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Meagher County, Montana

Williams Mountain

Meagher County, MT 50-ft pole L-4 lookout built 1937 on the Lewis and Clark NF; summer lookouts named 1938 and 1941; destroyed 1971 per firelookout.com; no site description found.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com says destroyed in 1971; the FFLA Montana list marks the tower gone

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. No source describes what remains at the site or whether visitors can reach it

Road to the top?
Unknown

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Cab on a tower50-foot pole tower with L-4 cab; 1937 item describes four 50-foot log legs and a 14-foot square cabinThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1937
Height
50 ft (15.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Lewis and Clark National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Meagher County, Montana
Coordinates
46.91168, −110.97480
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-williams-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 its recorded height.

Downloads about 4.0 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 BuiltA 1937 Big Timber Pioneer item, quoted by the Forest Lookouts page, says four such towers were finished or nearly so in the Little Belt Mountains, one on Williams Mountain; firelookout.com dates it to 1937Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. 1938 StaffedArnold H. Chloupeck named as the summer lookout (The Independent Record, July 1938)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  3. 1941 StaffedBill Jones named as lookout (Billings Gazette, July 1941)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1946 FireLookouts on Williams Mountain and Porphyry Peak reported a fire near Black Butte, this side of Ringling (The Independent Record, August 1946)Source: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. No record between 1946 and 1964
  6. 1964 EventNational Geodetic Survey station record, marked as described by the Forest Service in 1964: a USFS lookout house on a towerSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  7. 1971 Destroyedfirelookout.com gives destruction in 1971; the FFLA list marks the tower gone without a dateSources: firelookout.com, firelookout.org
  8. 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.

The lookout stood on Williams Mountain in Meagher County, Montana, about 12 miles west of Neihart, in the Lewis and Clark National Forest.1

The Forest Service put it up in 1937.1,2 The firelookout.com record gives it as a 50-foot pole tower with an L-4 cab.1 A 1937 Big Timber Pioneer item, quoted on the Forest Lookouts page, says four such towers were finished or nearly finished in the Little Belt Mountains that year, and that one stood on Williams Mountain.2 The item describes the towers' main supports as four 50-foot logs, with a 14-foot square cabin and 2-foot catwalks.2

Lookouts worked here for the summer season.2 A 1938 Independent Record item names Arnold H. Chloupeck as the summer lookout, and a 1941 Billings Gazette item names Bill Jones.2 Jones had to bring in creosote to coat the tower's legs. Flies crept into the cracks, and woodpeckers after the flies made his perch unusually unsteady.2

In August 1946 lookouts on Williams Mountain and on Porphyry Peak reported a fire near Black Butte, short of Ringling, and a county crew was sent out to fight it.2

A National Geodetic Survey station record says the Forest Service described the station in 1964 as a lookout house on a tower.2

The firelookout.com record says the tower was destroyed in 1971.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's Montana list also marks it as gone, without a date.3 Neither source says how it was destroyed.1,3

We found no source that describes what remains at the site, or whether visitors can reach it.1,2,3

  1. Williams Mtn. Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/williamsmtn.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Williams Mountain - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Montana), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/williams-mountain.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. 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. FOREST LOOKOUTS -- western US (Ron Kemnow's weebly sites) Gave us: height, 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, height, 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.