Rocky Butte Natural Area

Rocky Butte is an extinct cinder cone, one of dozens of small volcanoes that make up the Boring Lava Field scattered across the Portland area. It grew from eruptions of basaltic andesite in the deep past, well over a hundred thousand years ago, and long ago went cold. What stands today is essentially the hard core of that old volcano, the tough rock that once filled its vent.

That toughness is why the butte is still here. During the great Ice Age floods that swept down the Columbia and scoured the region, softer hills were buried or washed away, while the resistant plug of Rocky Butte held its ground. The steep, rocky faces that give the butte its name are the exposed bones of that ancient volcanic vent.

Those same faces have long drawn rock climbers, who work the old quarry walls on the butte's flanks. Stone cut from the butte itself went into building projects around the city, so in a real sense pieces of this little volcano are scattered through Portland's older architecture.

The park at the summit is Joseph Wood Hill Park, named for the founder of a military academy that once stood nearby, and it was dedicated to the city in 1935. What draws the eye is the stonework: massive basalt-block walls, cut-stone archways, and a broad flat viewing platform ringed by a parapet, all of it heavy, handsome, and clearly made to last.

It was built by hand during the Great Depression. Between about 1934 and 1939, crews drawn from the ranks of the unemployed, working under relief programs including the Works Progress Administration, laid the walls, cut the archways, and graded the two scenic approach roads that climb the butte. The whole ensemble is recognized today as a historic district, a well-preserved example of Depression-era public works.

Nearby, workers using hand methods bored a tunnel through the butte in the same era, a companion piece to the celebrated highway engineering of the period. For a time the butte also held a large county jail, since gone, but it is the graceful stonework at the crown that endures as the reason to come up.

The land here is part of the traditional homelands of the Chinookan peoples of the lower Columbia and the Clackamas and Kalapuya peoples of the Willamette Valley, who lived, fished, and traded across this country for countless generations. Their descendants today are enrolled in communities including the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, living Oregon nations with enduring ties to this landscape.

The view from the parapet helps explain why this ground has always mattered. Below runs the Columbia River, one of the great travel and trading corridors of the continent, and on a clear day the horizon fills with volcanic peaks, Mount Hood to the east and Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams to the north across the river in Washington.

Rocky Butte sits among a family of similar buttes across east Portland, each a small remnant volcano. Taken together they are a reminder that the tidy, green city below is built across a quiet volcanic field, its old cones now softened into parks, viewpoints, and neighborhood hills.

For all its city setting, the butte keeps a wooded, natural feel on its slopes, especially through the Rocky Butte Natural Area below the summit. Douglas fir and bigleaf maple shade the hillsides, mixed with holly, cherry-laurel, and a tangle of ivy, and in spring wildflowers come up along the leafy paths.

The trees and thickets draw the birds you would expect in a Portland greenspace, songbirds working the canopy, woodpeckers on the dead snags, and hawks that ride the updrafts along the rocky faces. Squirrels and the occasional coyote move through the wooded margins, quietly at home on the edge of the neighborhoods.

It is worth remembering that the summit park and the natural area serve different moods. The crown is about the sweeping view and the stone parapet, while the slopes below offer a shadier, greener, more low-key woodland walk close to home.

Summer is the reliable season for the view. Long, clear evenings put the whole Cascade skyline on display, and the summit becomes a favorite spot to catch the sunset and, after dark, the lights of the city spreading out below.

Spring greens up the wooded slopes and brings wildflowers to the natural area's paths, a good time for a quieter walk below the crown even when valley clouds are hiding the far peaks.

Fall brings crisp, clear stretches between the rains, some of the sharpest long-distance visibility of the year, and a scatter of color from the bigleaf maples on the slopes.

Winter is the gamble. Portland's gray, wet days can swallow the view entirely, but a rare clear, cold spell rewards you with snow-bright volcanoes standing over the city. Come on a bright day and dress warm, since the exposed summit catches the wind.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.