McGuire Mtn. Lookout Rental

The lookout on McGuire Mountain is a single room, 12 feet by 12, framed in wood under a pyramidal roof. A smaller pyramid sits on top of that. This is the cupola, reached by a wooden ladder that rises from inside the cabin. Windows surround the whole structure, so the view runs the full circle. The Forest Service puts the summit at almost 7,000 feet, one of the tallest in the area, and says the sunrise and sunset over the Cabinet Mountains are best seen from here.

The main floor once served as living quarters for the fire guard, according to Visit Montana. It now holds a modern wood stove, two twin-size bed boards without mattresses, a table, a bench, a shovel, a bucket, and cleaning gear. Firewood is left for guests, though the Forest Service says the supply cannot be guaranteed, and Visit Montana gives vandalism as the reason. There is no electricity. There is also no water at the lookout, and sources nearby are few. Visit Montana advises treating all open water as contaminated, so renters carry in what they drink, cook with, and wash in. A toilet stands outside. A combination lock holds the door, and the ranger district gives out the combination by phone before arrival. Up to four people may stay. Nobody cleans between parties, so renters clean on arrival and again before they leave.

The road to Little Sutton Mountain

McGuire Mountain stands about 14 miles southwest of Eureka, in the Rexford Ranger District of the Kootenai National Forest. The route follows Othorp Lake Road 854 to Pinkham Creek Road 856 and continues about 13 miles along it. It then turns west on Sutton Ridge Road 494 to Little Sutton Mountain, where a sign marks the start of the lookout trail. Vehicles stay there. Trail #446 climbs about 2.5 miles to the cabin and continues past it for many more miles. Arrival depends on road and weather, and the Forest Service notes the road is normally plowed to within 14 miles of the cabin. The Forest Service gives the season as mid-June, while Visit Montana’s listing gives June 1 to September 30, weather permitting.

Below the mountain lies the Koocanusa Area, strung along the narrow 90-mile Koocanusa Reservoir behind Libby Dam. The reservoir holds kokanee salmon, Kamloops rainbow trout, bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, and burbot. Two paved highways run beside it from Eureka to Libby, and the Forest Service has designated them a Scenic Byway. Along Highway 37, on the east side of the reservoir, travelers catch glimpses of the Ural-Tweed bighorn sheep herd. Trail #90 starts just off the reservoir on Highway 37 and follows McGuire Creek closely. In fall the western larch change color.

Built for $805.87

Visit Montana gives the lookout’s construction date as 1923 and its cost as $805.87. For more than twenty years it served as an observation point for detecting forest fires. It was abandoned around 1944. Renovation began in 1983 and was completed in 1998 under a PIT Project, and that work made the lookout eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The Forest Service then opened it for rent.

A support shed also dates from the 1980s. It covers an old steel tank that once housed batteries for a radio repeater and other electronics. The shed now stores gear for the rental.

Shutters, a vault, and a roof on the shed

Much of the present condition is the work of the Northwest Montana Lookout Association, a local chapter of the Forest Fire Lookout Association that works under agreement with the Kootenai National Forest. Its volunteers made a first on-site condition assessment at McGuire in 2016. By the association’s account, that grew into a major rehabilitation:

• leveling the lookout
• removing, reconditioning, and replacing every window
• building new shutters
• moving the outhouse onto a newly built vault
• reroofing the lookout and both support structures

The reroof went to Leif Haugen of the Flathead National Forest and a volunteer crew of four. The lookout is a D-6 cupola design, and work on its roof required fall-protection certification.

By 2022 the association was calling McGuire “a very popular destination lookout.” That year the Forest Service took it out of the rental program for the first week of August so volunteers could finish the shutters for both the lower and cupola windows, work left over from 2021. Helen Tyree, Joe and Joann Schmidt, Rick Davis, Chuck Stearns, Chuck Manning, and John Wilson logged 275 volunteer hours between August 1 and 7. The Youth Conservation Corps packed in supplies and water for the five-day stay. The crew also started a new outhouse pit, to be finished the next year.

In early June 2023 the Kootenai National Forest Helitack Crew airlifted supplies by helicopter. The Northwest Montana Back Country Horsemen carried the tools and supplies the helicopter did not, at both the start and the end of the work. The Youth Conservation Corps again helped haul loads to and from the summit. The association’s 2023 year-end report declared the restoration “finally completed.”

No work was done on the lookout itself in 2024, but the crew returned for the shed. Over an intermittent span of four days, Barb Hvizdak, Helen Tyree, Jim Peacock, and Chuck Manning worked alongside Forest Service personnel and the Youth Conservation Corps. They built a roof on the back side of the shed to better protect the lookout’s shutters while the cabin is open to renters.