butte

The South Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA. Erosion has created dramatic configurations in the sedimentary rock formations in and around the gorge.

Chimney Rock, Bayard, Nebraska. A pinnacle of rock known as a ‘butte’ is all that remains of what was once a larger table-like outcrop called a ‘mesa’.

Eagle Lake, Acadia National Park, Maine. The region's mixed forests are famous for their dazzling autumnal colours.

Steep-sided, flat-topped hill, formed in horizontally layered sedimentary rocks, largely in arid areas. A large butte with a pronounced tablelike profile is a mesa.

Buttes and mesas are characteristic of semi-arid areas where remnants of resistant rock layers protect softer rock underneath, as in the plateau regions of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, USA.

Butte

City in southwestern Montana, USA, on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains; population (2000) 33,900 (Butte-Silver Bow). Butte was founded in 1864 during a rush for gold (which was soon exhausted); copper was found some 20 years later on what was then called ‘the richest hill on earth’. Declining copper prices forced many mines to close in the 1970s and 1980s (the last mine in Butte closed in 1983), but the city has developed industries of its own, including energy research and tourism, and now acts as a service centre for the region (where copper and molydenum mining are still important).

Butte was incorporated as a city in 1897; in 1977 it consolidated with Silver Bow County to become Butte-Silver Bow city. It is the seat of the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology (1893).