Square Butte basalt formation Geraldine
— — the shape Russell kept painting.
Not only on a wall.
“A flat-topped butte rising about 2,400 feet off the wheat country south of Geraldine, Montana, with dark shonkinite cliffs ringing the summit. Charlie Russell painted it from every angle in the years he lived at Cascade and Great Falls; the butte still serves as the recognisable backdrop in a good share of his late landscapes. A herd of bighorn sheep lives on the cliffs, and the summit plateau is held as a Bureau of Land Management Outstanding Natural Area. The two-track up the south side is rough, dry, and worth the climb. — from the studio
Square Butte basalt formation Geraldine, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Square Butte rises in Chouteau County, central Montana, about ten kilometres south of the small town of Geraldine and roughly seventy kilometres east of Great Falls. The summit reaches about 5,680 feet, standing roughly 2,400 feet above the surrounding wheat country of the Highwood Plain. The butte is a laccolith intrusion of shonkinite — a dark, alkaline igneous rock related to the Highwood Mountains to the southwest — that has been exposed by erosion of the softer sedimentary rocks around it. Bureau of Land Management manages most of the upper butte as the Square Butte Outstanding Natural Area, 1,947 acres set aside in 1976.
Despite the common shorthand, the cliffs are not basalt; the dark cap is shonkinite, an alkaline rock named for the Shonkin Sag region just to the southwest. The intrusion forced its way as molten rock between sedimentary layers in Eocene time, roughly fifty million years ago, then cooled in place. The softer sandstone and shale around it weathered away, leaving the cap rock standing as the flat top visible today. The neighbouring Highwood Mountains, Round Butte, and Cascade Butte share the same family of igneous rocks and the same Eocene age.
Access is by a Bureau of Land Management two-track that climbs the south side of the butte from a marked turnoff south of Geraldine. The road is dirt, unmaintained, and impassable when wet; high clearance is recommended and four-wheel drive is sensible. The top of the butte is open for day-use hiking, and a small herd of bighorn sheep — released here in the 1980s — lives along the cliff bands. Charlie Russell painted the butte often during his years at Great Falls and used its profile as a recurring backdrop in late landscapes.