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Fire lookout · Gallatin County, Montana

Windy Pass

Gallatin County, MT ground-level lookout (log cabin c.1914, L-4 cab 1931), listed abandoned and gone; a 1934 Forest Service rental cabin on the same trail is not tied to it.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. firelookout.com says abandoned and gone, with no dates; the FFLA Montana list marks it 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 access to the old lookout site. A separate Forest Service rental, Windy Pass Cabin, is open June 16 to October 14 and has no motorized access

Road to the top?
No, you have to hike
Trail
Windy Pass Cabin, the 1934 rental, is a 2.5-mile hike or horseback ride up the Windy Pass Trail with a 1,300 ft climb. No source describes a route to the old lookout site

Facts

Status
Gone
Type
Ground-level cabLog cabin (c.1914), later an L-4 cab (1931)The design: L-4
Built of
WoodGoing by its design; no source says so in words.
Built
1914
Height
Unknown
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Gallatin National Forest
Land
Federal land
Location
Gallatin County, Montana
Coordinates
45.26509, −111.10121
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-windy-pass

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 3.9 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. 1914 BuiltLog cabin, around 1914 (c.1914 per the Forest Lookouts page)Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  2. No record between 1914 and 1931
  3. 1931 AlteredL-4 cab recorded in 1931Sources: firelookout.com, montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1934 EventWindy Pass Cabin, a Forest Service rental on the same trail, was built in 1934; no source links it to the lookoutSource: fs.usda.gov
  5. 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.

The Windy Pass lookout stood in the Gallatin National Forest, about 29 miles south of Bozeman, Montana.1 The Forest Lookouts site dates a log cabin there to around 1914 and an L-4 cab to 1931.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association lists the site as a ground-level lookout rather than a tower.3

The firelookout.com record says the lookout was abandoned and is gone, but it gives no dates for either.1 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list also marks it as gone.3

Today the Forest Service rents a cabin called Windy Pass Cabin, on the Windy Pass Trail.4,5 The agency says it was built in 1934 and calls it historic.4,5 It is open from June 16 to October 14.4 There is no motorized access, so guests walk or ride a horse the 2.5 miles up the trail, a climb of about 1,300 feet.4 Drinking water and firewood are not provided.4

No source we read says the rental cabin is the old lookout or stands on its site.1,4,5 The lookout's elevation is 9,160 feet on firelookout.com.1 The rental cabin sits near the Gallatin Crest at about 8,900 feet, according to the Forest Service and Wild Montana.4,6 We found no source that says whether the old lookout site itself is open to visitors.1,2,3,4

  1. Windy Pass Fire Lookout Cabin, firelookout.com, https://www.firelookout.com/mt/windypass.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Windy Pass - Forest Lookouts, Forest Lookouts (Montana), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/windy-pass.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  3. Montana Lookouts, Forest Fire Lookout Association, https://firelookout.org/lookouts/us/mt/ (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  4. Windy Pass Cabin, Custer Gallatin National Forest, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r01/custergallatin/recreation/windy-pass-cabin (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  5. Windy Pass, Custer Gallatin National Forest, U.S. Forest Service, https://www.fs.usda.gov/r01/custergallatin/recreation/windy-pass (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  6. Plan a Trip to a Forest Service Cabin or Lookout in Montana, Wild Montana, https://wildmontana.org/2022/12/19/community/plan-a-trip-to-a-forest-service-cabin-or-lookout-in-montana/ (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: what it is built of, design, 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, visiting details, 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.