Pilot Butte served as a beacon for travelers in Central Oregon. Sometime in 1813, an Indian lookout from one of several tribes summering nearby might have climbed the butte and seen an exploration party moving along the Deschutes River. A volcanic tuff boulder near the river carved with the date 1813 has been credited with indicating the presence of the first Euro-Americans in this vicinity. From 1813 to 1835, fur trappers from the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Vancouver and the John Jacob Astor Company at Astoria searched for beaver along the region’s waterways, and other trappers of that era included Finian McDonald, Thomas McKay, Peter Skene Ogden, and Nathaniel Wyeth. On December 4, 1843, the John C. Fremont Expedition, mapping the West, camped in Shevlin Park just west of here as it headed south in difficult winter conditions. This volcanic landmark was first called Red Butte, then later Pilot Knob, and diary sources from the 1853 Elliott Wagon Train referred to “Pilot Butte by the River.” By the early 1860s, when military wagon trains used the Huntington Wagon Road between The Dalles and Klamath Falls, the name Pilot Butte was firmly established, and that route passed near the butte’s western base.