FirefinderFire lookouts of the US

Fire lookout · Lake County, Montana

Woodward Point

Lake County, MT lookout: a 50-foot pole L-4 tower built 1936, abandoned 1964 and destroyed about 1966; no source describes the site today.

Gone: The lookout no longer stands. Only the site is left. Destroyed about 1966 per firelookout.com; Forest Lookouts says removed, undated

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 tower50-foot pole L-4 towerThe design: L-4
Built of
Not recorded
Built
1936
Height
50 ft (15.2 m)
Elevation
Unknown
Agency
Flathead National Forest/Montana DNRC
Land
Federal land
Location
Lake County, Montana
Coordinates
47.78329, −113.88301
Registers
Not on a lookout register
This entry
VerifiedResearched, then checked independently. Updated 10 Oct 2026.
Firefinder id
us-mt-woodward-point

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 4.4 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. 1936 Built50-foot pole L-4 towerSource: firelookout.com
  2. No record between 1936 and 1959
  3. 1959 EventReported fires traced to reflections of Swan Lake town lights; account credited to the Independent RecordSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  4. 1959 StaffedA lookout reported five fires in August 1959 that could not be found; the next day the same lookout reported the same firesSource: montanalookouts.weebly.com
  5. 1964 AbandonedAbandonedSource: firelookout.com
  6. 1966 DestroyedDestroyed about 1966Source: firelookout.com
  7. 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.

Woodward Point is a lookout site in Lake County, Montana, about 14 miles northeast of Polson, at an elevation of 4,819 feet.1 The page lists the Flathead National Forest and the Montana DNRC as its agencies.1

The tower was built in 1936 as a 50-foot pole design of the L-4 type.1

An August 1959 account, credited on the page to the Independent Record, tells of a lookout who reported five new blazes that could not be found.2 The next day the same lookout reported the fires again, in the same area.2 The chief fire warden, worried by the reports, joined the lookout.2 The fire dispatcher then held a blanket up to the window, and the flames vanished.2 The warden's explanation was that reflections of Swan Lake town's lights off the water reached the lookout 13 miles away and looked like flickering flames.2

The account calls the lookout "Woodward peak," while the page heading and the other sources say Woodward Point. Because Forest Lookouts files the account under Woodward Point, we treat them as the same site.2

Rex Kamstra's page says the tower was abandoned in 1964 and destroyed about 1966.1 Forest Lookouts marks the site as removed, with no date.2 The Forest Fire Lookout Association's list shows the tower as gone.3

None of the sources we read describes what, if anything, remains at the site today, or whether the public can reach it. Anyone thinking of visiting should check with the Flathead National Forest first.

  1. Woodward Point Fire Lookout Tower, firelookout.com (Rex Kamstra), https://www.firelookout.com/mt/woodwardpoint.html (accessed 2026-10-10). ↩
  2. Woodward Point, Forest Lookouts (Ron Kemnow), https://montanalookouts.weebly.com/woodward-point.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: 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, 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.