Padres Butte is a 4,043-foot butte in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area near Padre Point on Lake Powell’s south shore in southern Utah. Rising from the arid Colorado Plateau beside a heavily altered reach of the Colorado River, it is significant for its connection to the Crossing of the Fathers, a series of sand bars about a mile west that once formed a fordable passage across the river’s great bend. When Lake Powell was created, the butte became an island in the reservoir, but lower water levels later reconnected it to Padre Point. Its name preserves the memory of that historic crossing and was officially adopted in 1961.