The Sutter Buttes are an isolated ring of eroded volcanic domes rising from California’s Sacramento Valley near Yuba City, often called the world’s smallest mountain range. Formed about 1.6 million years ago and dormant for about 1.4 million years, they reflect multiple eruptive phases and later erosion. Long before European contact, the buttes were deeply important to Native peoples including the Nisenan, Maidu, and Wintun, who regarded them as sacred and visited them for food, hunting, ceremony, and beliefs about the afterlife. Later associated with exploration, violence against Native people, gas prospecting, and a Cold War missile base, they remain a prominent but largely inaccessible landmark.