Steptoe Butte State Park

The story

Four hundred million years ago, this slab of quartzite stood on what was literally the western edge of the North American continent. When apocalyptic basalt lava flows flooded the region millions of years later, they buried the ancient landscape under thousands of feet of liquid rock—leaving only this stubborn peak sticking out like an island in a black sea. Geologists were so struck by the phenomenon that they turned the mountain into a proper noun: any old rock peak sticking out through a surrounding blanket of younger lava is now officially called a 'steptoe.'

The peak's strange isolations eventually attracted James S. 'Cashup' Davis, an eccentric local homesteader who decided the top of a 3,612-foot, wind-blasted rock mound was the logical place to build a luxury hotel. In the late 19th century, Cashup hauled lumber up the cone and erected a multi-story inn complete with a summit observatory telescope. He lived out his final days on top of the mountain entertaining visitors, but his grand structure met the fate of most wood buildings on exposed peaks: it burned down completely in 1911, leaving the summit back to the hawks, wind, and radio towers.