Spencer Butte is a prominent landmark in

Lane County, Oregon Lane County is one of the Oregon counties, 36 counties in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 382,971, making it the fourth-most populous county in Oregon. The county seat is Eugene, ...

, United States, described in the National Geodetic Survey as "a prominent timbered butte with a bare rocky summit" on the southern edge of

Eugene Eugene may refer to: People and fictional characters * Eugene (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Gene Eugene, stage name of Canadian born actor, record producer, engineer, composer and musi ...

, with an elevation of . Spencer Butte is accessible from Spencer Butte Park and has several hiking trails to the summit. The tree cover on the butte is predominantly

Douglas fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is the tallest tree in the Pinaceae family. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Or ...

; however, the butte is treeless at its summit. The butte is the tallest point visible when looking south from downtown Eugene.

Name

The

butte In geomorphology, a butte ( ) is an isolated hill with steep, often vertical sides and a small, relatively flat top; buttes are smaller landforms than mesas, plateaus, and table (landform), tablelands. The word ''butte'' comes from the French l ...

is called Champ-a te or Cham-o-tee by the native

Kalapuya The Kalapuya are a Native American people, which had eight independent groups speaking three mutually intelligible dialects. The Kalapuya tribes' traditional homelands were the Willamette Valley of present-day western Oregon in the United Sta ...

, meaning

rattlesnake Rattlesnakes are venomous snakes that form the genus, genera ''Crotalus'' and ''Sistrurus'' of the subfamily Crotalinae (the pit vipers). All rattlesnakes are vipers. Rattlesnakes are predators that live in a wide array of habitats, hunting sm ...

. One popular theory is that Spencer Butte was named for a young Englishman of the

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

named Spencer, who was said to have been killed by the Kalapuya after climbing the hill alone. Another, less popular theory holds that the butte was named after

Secretary of War The secretary of war was a member of the U.S. president's Cabinet, beginning with George Washington's administration. A similar position, called either "Secretary at War" or "Secretary of War", had been appointed to serve the Congress of the ...

John C. Spencer John Canfield Spencer (January 8, 1788 – May 17, 1855) was an American lawyer, politician, judge and United States Cabinet secretary in the administration of President of the United States, President John Tyler. After graduating from Union Co ...

in July 1845 by

Elijah White Dr. Elijah White (1806–1879) was a missionary and agent for the United States government in Oregon Country during the mid-19th century. A trained physician from New York State, he first traveled to Oregon as part of the Methodist Mission in th ...

. Spencer was no longer Secretary of War by 1845, however.

In popular culture

* The song "All Of Me Wants All You" by

Sufjan Stevens Sufjan Stevens ( ; born July 1, 1975) is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. He has released ten solo studio albums and multiple collaborative albums with other artists. Stevens has received Grammy and Academy Award nomina ...

mentions Spencer Butte twice; the song is from the album

Carrie & Lowell ''Carrie & Lowell'' is the seventh studio album by American musician Sufjan Stevens. It was released on March 31, 2015, by Asthmatic Kitty. It was produced by Stevens, and features guest contributions from Thomas Bartlett, Sean Carey, Ca ...

, which also includes a song titled "Eugene" after the city, and makes many other references to places in Oregon.

Geology

Spencer Butte is

volcanic A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

in origin, potentially being a

volcanic plug A volcanic plug, also called a volcanic neck or lava neck, is a volcano, volcanic object created when magma hardens within a Volcanic vent, vent on an active volcano. When present, a plug can cause an extreme build-up of high gas pressure if risi ...

References

External links

*
Official website
Buttes of Oregon Geography of Eugene, Oregon Landforms of Lane County, Oregon Mountains of Oregon Parks in Eugene, Oregon Volcanoes of Oregon Volcanic plugs of the United States {{LaneCountyOR-geo-stub