Nature
Smithsonian Butte is a prominent six thousand seven hundred eighty-foot summit in the Canaan Mountain Wilderness of southwestern Utah, near Rockville and Zion National Park, rising steeply above the Virgin River desert country. Its pale Jurassic Navajo Sandstone sits atop darker red Kayenta sandstone, reflecting the geology typical of the Zion region. Geologist Clarence Edward Dutton named it for the Smithsonian Institution, which sponsored exploration as his field party mapped about twelve thousand square miles of southern Utah’s high plateaus between 1875 and 1877. Officially adopted in 1934, the name links the butte to the surveys that helped define the geography of the Colorado Plateau.
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Apple Valley, Utah · United States
