West Butte Road is a public road that traces the western perimeter of the Sutter Buttes. It runs between North Butte Road and a fork on the northwest corner of the Buttes, where one fork of it heads northwest and dead ends shortly thereafter. The other fork continues between there and Pass Road, overlaps Pass Road for a short distance in the town of West Butte, and separates from Pass Road a bit farther east on the south side than on the north side; it then intersects South Butte Road slightly east of Tarke, and continues between there and a dead end south of Highway 20, tracing the eastern edge of the Sutter Bypass.

The West Butte Bike Route follows Acacia Avenue and Pass Road between Close True Value Lumber Company on Acacia Avenue in Sutter and the intersection of Pass Road and West Butte Road in West Butte.

In 1941, botanist Amos Arthur Heller collected samples of Sacramento Valley buttercups,¹ cowbag clovers,² foothill larkspurs,³ silver bush lupines,⁴ foothill phacelias,⁵ and fiddlenecks⁶ on a steep, grassy hillside on West Butte Road just west of Braggs Canyon, creating a valuable historic record of the native plants that grew in the area. Most of these plants can still be seen in the area, although their numbers are decreasing due to competition from non-native grasses that were introduced for cattle to graze on.

Footnotes

1. Consortium of California Herbaria
2. Consortium of California Herbaria
3. Consortium of California Herbaria
4. Consortium of California Herbaria
5. Consortium of California Herbaria
6. Consortium of California Herbaria