No stranger to lookouts, Stensgar Mountain was first used for fire detection in 1930 when a platform tower and cabin were built by the Washington Division of Forestry. Somewhere over the years Stensgar morphed into Stranger Mountain Lookout, and no less than four structures have occupied the site. The original platform tower was replaced by a 50' pole tower with L-6 cab in 1936. That in turn was replaced by DNR flattop live-in cab with catwalk on a 40' wooden tower in 1959 which only 24 years later was replaced with the current updated DNR flattop cab on a 42' wooden tower in 1983.

Additional information courtesy of Ray Kresek: "Stranger ("Stensgar" on most maps), a DNR live-in lookout tower near Chewelah, WA was successfully moved intact 30 miles from atop the mountain to the Colville fairgrounds last month without as much as a broken window, after two years of negotiations with the DNR. It had to be removed from the mountain. In a dream-come-true fashion, Stevens County Fair manager Lori Matlock was able to fit the use of nearly a dozen pieces of donated heavy machinery into a fine tuned clockwork that made it all happen. A boom crane, on the mountaintop to install a new Homeland Security facility, was able to pluck the entire cab and catwalk off its 40' wooden tower. A large DNR flatbed truck received it for the first leg of the trip. A couple miles down the steep, narrow road off the summit, a larger truck and lowboy trailer, loaned by a local logging contractor, hauled the twenty foot wide load via all of the backroads into downtown Colville. Waiting at the fairgrounds were 2 giant forklifts from a local sawmill, to gently set it on the ground. The tower's original legs were re-set on concrete piers, cut off at 13'; and a few days later there just happened to be another construction crane available at 4pm. It took but a few minutes, and the Stranger Lookout tower was up in the air again. Total cost: $25. The rest was all donated."