Billings Butte

British Columbia. Other name for Extinguisher Tower
Earliest known reference to this name is 1912 (Walcott).
Billings Butte - Robson Peak - Iyatunga Mountain. Panonamic view of the Robson massif and adjoining mountains, with the great Hunga glacier in the foreground. Photo by Charles D. Walcott

Billings Butte – Robson Peak – Iyatunga Mountain. Panonamic view of the Robson massif and adjoining mountains, with the great Hunga glacier in the foreground. Photo by Charles D. Walcott
National Geographic Magazine 1913

“Billing’s Butte or the Extinguisher is the most valuable spot to the geologist in the Rockies,” wrote Charles Doolittle Walcott after his visit in 1912.

“One of the names proposed by Dr. Coleman for a prominent monadnock that is surrounded by ice, east of Mount Robson, is ‘ The Extinguisher ‘ and Mr. Wheeler has adopted the name on his map. I presume Dr. Coleman had in mind the conical extinguisher used in putting out candles in the olden times. It so happens that that particular mass of rock carries a very important bed of Cambro-Ordovician fossils, and will be referred to many times in the future in literature. It may be that I shall suggest a shorter and more euphonious name for it,” Walcott wrote to the Surveyor-General in 1912. His suggestion, “Billings Butte”, was not adopted.

References:

  • Walcott, Charles Doolittle [1850–1927]. “The monarch of the Canadian Rockies.” National Geographic Magazine, (1913):626. Internet Archive
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