Louise Baumann, age 10, of Cleveland, Ohio, for her question:

What is a butte?

A butte is a rock formation, a sort of large pimple on the face of the earth. It looks like a small hill with very steep sides. Usually the top is flat as a table but it may be humped or rounded. From a distance, a butte looks like a tall castle built with steep walls of rock.

These earth pimples are carved by wind, water and weather from the rocky face of the earth. In some cases, the butte is a pile of rubbish carried down and dumped in one place by running water. More likely it was once a core of hard rock set into the soft rocks of the earths crust. Wind and water wore away the softer rocks and left the rocky core standing up by itself.

The cores of old volcanoes are masses of hard, dense rock. Through the long ages, the wind. and water wear away the surrounding debris and the old volcanic core is left standing as a butte. L Assen Butte in California is formed from such a volcanic core. The butte of Butte, Montana, was built from a deposit of debris.