Huerfano Butte, a stark volcanic outcrop standing near the Spanish Peaks and the Wet Mountains, was named El Huerfano, "the orphan," in the late 1700s by an unknown Spanish trader and for centuries guided Hispanos and Indian peoples passing through the region. After 1821, when the land became part of Mexico, it served as a beacon to settlement as northern migrating New Mexicans established plazas and placitas, small agricultural communities, along the Huerfano River and nearby streams. The long Hispano presence in Southern Colorado remained visible in the names of rivers, mountains, towns, and villages and in the people of the region. In 1853 Colonel John C. Fremont's fifth and last western expedition, a railroad survey bound for California, passed the butte, and the expedition's photographer, Solomon Carvalho, photographed it, comparing it to a mammoth sugar loaf. On the vast Vigil-St. Vrain Grant of more than 4 million acres, Huerfano Butte and its rich surrounding grasslands drew settlers, including a Frenchman named Beaubois, who in 1858 established a ranch and later built a fort one-half mile north of this point. In the 1830s and 1840s, plazas and placitas dotted the river valleys in Huerfano Butte County.