Missouri Buttes are located in Crook County in northeast

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...

on the northwest flank of the Black Hills Uplift. The buttes are northwest (N60°W) of

Devils Tower Devils Tower (also known as Bear Lodge Butte) is a butte, possibly laccolithic, composed of igneous rock in the Bear Lodge Ranger District of the Black Hills, near Hulett and Sundance in Crook County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle ...

between the Little Missouri and the Belle Fourche rivers. The Missouri Buttes consist of four separate summits which arise from an eroded

mesa A mesa is an isolated, flat-topped elevation, ridge or hill, which is bounded from all sides by steep escarpments and stands distinctly above a surrounding plain. Mesas characteristically consist of flat-lying soft sedimentary rocks capped by a ...

platform, the Butte Divide, which has an elevation of . The butte peaks form a rough rectangle 0.5 x 0.65 mi. in size. The northwest butte is the highest with a summit at . The northeast butte has an elevation of , the southwest butte has an elevation of and the southeast butte has an elevation of . A small lake, the Missouri Buttes Lake, lies west of the buttes. As with Devils Tower, the buttes are composed of

igneous Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or ...

intrusive

phonolite Phonolite is an uncommon extrusive rock, of intermediate chemical composition between felsic and mafic, with texture ranging from aphanitic (fine-grained) to porphyritic (mixed fine- and coarse-grained). Phonolite is a variation of the igneous ...

which exhibits columnar jointing. The rocks of the buttes have been interpreted to be part of a

laccolith A laccolith is a body of intrusive rock with a dome-shaped upper surface and a level base, fed by a conduit from below. A laccolith forms when magma (molten rock) rising through the Earth's crust begins to spread out horizontally, prying apar ...

, a magmatic

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a compan ...

or volcano conduits that became exposed at the surface after overlying rocks eroded away.Zavada, P., et al., ''On the geological origin of Devils Tower (WY, USA),'' American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #V33C-2659
/ref> Devils Tower - Missouri Buttes

References

Landforms of Crook County, Wyoming Buttes of Wyoming Volcanism of Wyoming {{Wyoming-geo-stub