Robert S. Young, the artist who accompanied the Pacific Railroad Survey of 1855, made a famous sketch of Black butte. Lieutenants Robert Stockton Williamson and Henry Larcom Abbot commanded the survey. It is not known who gave the butte its name; however, it was called Black Butte at the time of the 1855 survey. Also called Pivot Mountains.
Believed by locals that once the snow melted from the top of Black Butte corn could be planted.
The butte is considered one of the most symmetrical volcanic cones in the Pacific Northwest. It resides in two counties, Jefferson and Deschutes. The U.S. Forest Service lookout at the summit residing in Jefferson County was the USFS's first lookouts in the Deschutes National Forest, erected in 1910.
“One of the area’s oldest volcanic cones, located on the edge of the mid-Oregon plateau long before the Belknap craters showed up on the McKenzie skyline and long before lava Butte of the Bend area came into existence.” Phil Brogan, the Bend Bulletin September 7, 1957
Sitting in the shadow of the butte, was one of Central Oregon’s largest stock “spreads” at 577 acres and the headquarters for the Black Butte Land and Livestock Company (incorporated in 1902), Black Butte Ranch.