Drive a spiral road to 3,600 feet and stare across 200 miles of rolling Washington farmland

They call it America’s Tuscany

A 3,612-foot quartzite butte rises out of southeast Washington’s Palouse country like something the landscape forgot to smooth over.

You can drive a paved road all the way to the summit, step out of your car, and look 200 miles in every direction. Below you, rolling hills covered in wheat, barley, lentils, and canola shift colors with the seasons.

Some people call this region America’s Tuscany. The rock under your feet is over 400 million years old.

The road that brings you here spirals up like a corkscrew, and the story behind this place goes back even further than the stone.

Ancient seafloor sand turned to stone

The quartzite that forms Steptoe Butte started as sand on an ancient ocean floor. Heat and pressure buried deep underground turned it into one of the hardest rocks in the state.

Between 15 and 7 million years ago, massive lava flows swallowed the surrounding landscape, but this butte stood above them like an island.

Geologists now use the word “steptoe” worldwide to describe any old bedrock that pokes through younger lava. They named the term after this very place.

The Ice Age floods shaped the hills around it

During the last Ice Age, powerful floods carried fine dust and silt called loess across the region. That material settled into the soft, rolling hills you see from the summit today.

The butte earned its National Natural Landmark status in 1965 for its rare geological importance.

So you’re standing on a rock older than almost anything else exposed in Washington, looking out over land shaped by some of the most dramatic floods the continent has ever seen.

360 degrees of farmland, mountains, and sky

From the top, you get an unbroken circle of Palouse patchwork. Fields shift through green, gold, and brown depending on when you visit.

On a clear day, you can spot the Blue Mountains to the south and the Bitterroot Range to the east. Photographers rank this as one of the top landscape locations in the country.

Sunrise and sunset bring low-angled light that rakes across the hills and carves deep shadows into every fold. Even overcast skies push moody clouds across the terrain, that make the whole scene shift by the minute.

The spiral road has no guardrails

A paved road wraps about two and a half times around the butte as it climbs to the summit. It’s narrow, with no guardrails, so take it slow and watch for hikers and cyclists sharing the lane.

Small pullouts along the way give you different angles of the Palouse below.

At the top, a parking area fits about 20 cars, and you’ll find vault restrooms, picnic tables, and barbecue grills. Lunch at 3,612 feet with a 200-mile view is hard to beat.

A pioneer built a hotel on the summit in 1888

In 1888, a man named James “Cashup” Davis hauled enough material to the top of this butte to build a two-story hotel.

He carved the switchback road up the western slope himself, using a horse-drawn scraper and hand tools. The hotel had a glass-enclosed observatory on the roof with a telescope powerful enough to see into four states.

Davis got his nickname because he always paid cash when everyone else bartered. The hotel faded fast, though.

The location was just too hard to reach, and Davis died up there in 1896.

Two teenagers burned the ruins in 1911

After Davis died, the hotel sat abandoned on the summit for years.

On March 11, 1911, two teenagers accidentally started a fire inside the ruins, and the whole building burned to the ground. What had been one of the most unusual hotels in the Northwest disappeared in a single night.

But the road Davis built by hand still forms the bones of the route you drive today, more than a century later.

The park opened on July 4, 1946

Native Americans knew the butte long before anyone else.

They called it “the power mountain” and believed a trip to the summit brought a gift of power from the mountain’s guardian spirit.

The butte’s current name comes from Colonel Edward Steptoe, a U.S. Army officer who served in the region during the 1850s.

Local conservationist Virgil McCroskey, who had known Cashup Davis personally, spent his retirement buying land on the butte to protect it.

He donated the land to Washington, and the park opened on July 4, 1946, exactly 58 years after Davis’s grand hotel opening.

437 new acres protect the last native prairie

In 2021, the state purchased 437 more acres on the butte’s flanks. That land holds three ecosystems: canyon grasslands, Palouse prairie, and forestland.

Before European settlement, the Palouse was a vast sea of native grasses and wildflowers. More than 99 percent of that original prairie is now gone.

The slopes of Steptoe Butte hold one of the best remaining examples of what this landscape looked like before agriculture moved in.

Washington’s Department of Natural Resources manages the land as a Natural Area Preserve.

Paragliders have launched here since the 1970s

Steptoe Butte is the only state-approved hang gliding site in Washington and one of just three approved for paragliding.

Pilots have launched from the butte since the early 1970s, giving the site over 50 years of free flight history.

The cone shape and low surrounding hills create favorable wind from almost any direction, which is rare for a launch site. Experienced pilots with their own gear can register through Washington State Parks to fly.

If you’re not flying, you can still watch colorful gliders circle above the Palouse from the summit.

The Palouse changes color every season

Late spring and early summer turn the hills vivid green, often splashed with bright yellow canola fields in bloom.

By late summer, harvest season brings golden fields and dust clouds kicked up by combines working the steep hillsides.

Fall planting sends fresh green sprouts across the landscape, giving you a second burst of color in November. Winter blankets the hills in snow and sets them against the dark butte.

The whole scene looks different every time, which is why photographers come back year after year.

Century-old barns and a 65-foot chainsaw sculpture

The Palouse is full of century-old barns and farmsteads.

Near Uniontown, the Dahmen Barn, built in 1935, sits behind a fence made from more than a thousand old wagon and tractor wheels, and it now serves as a center for local artists.

In Colfax, the Codger Pole stands 65 feet tall, a chainsaw sculpture marking a high school football rematch played 50 years after the original game by the same players.

The Roy Chatters Newspaper and Printing Museum in the town of Palouse lets you see an 1887 printing press in action.

These stops line the 208-mile Palouse Scenic Byway and make the drive to Steptoe Butte part of the trip.

Palouse Falls drops 198 feet into a basalt canyon

Kamiak Butte County Park sits about 15 miles southeast of Steptoe Butte and stands at 3,641 feet.

It has five miles of forested trails through Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and Western larch, with over 130 bird species and 170 plant species recorded there.

About 90 miles west, Palouse Falls drops 198 feet into a basalt canyon carved more than 13,000 years ago by Ice Age floods.

Local schoolchildren petitioned the legislature for its state waterfall designation, and it became official in 2014. The 208-mile Palouse Scenic Byway connects all of it.

Drive to the top and see an entire region

Few places in America let you drive to the summit of a geological landmark and look out over an entire region in every direction.

Ancient rock, rolling farmland, distant mountain ranges, and wide-open sky all come together in one spot here. The butte is free to explore with a Washington State Discover Pass, available as a day pass or annual pass.

There’s no camping on the butte, but the towns of Colfax and Pullman work as a base. Come for the views, the photography, or just the quiet of the open Palouse.

Visit Steptoe Butte State Park in Washington

You’ll find Steptoe Butte State Park 12 miles north of Colfax, Wash., off Hume Road with signs from Highway 195. The park opens at 8 a.m. and closes at dusk year-round.

A Washington State Discover Pass is required for vehicle access, with day passes at $10 and annual passes at $45. The summit road is not maintained in winter, so check conditions before you go in colder months.

At the top, you’ll find picnic tables, barbecue grills, vault restrooms, and interpretive panels covering the butte’s geology and history.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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