2000-09-28 04:00:00 PDT Yuba City, Sutter County -- The spiked crown of the Sutter Buttes dominates ambient Central Valley landscapes for miles. To hear locals tell it, this ancient volcano has an allure that enables it to dominate dreams, as well.

"The Sutter Buttes are a magical flower of stone on the valley floor," said Walt Anderson, a naturalist who started a fight in 1976 to keep the buttes a privately owned preserve that allowed public access.

"Its geology is unique. Its combination of plants and animals is also unique. The buttes are a biological island, placed between the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevada," Anderson said. After a decade spent promoting natural values here, Anderson now is an Arizona-based professor who leads eco- tours to exotic locales like the Galapagos. Yet he comes back to hike the buttes whenever he can. "They revive my spirit," he said.

Margit Sands, a local rancher and first- grade teacher, is on the board of the Middle Mountain Foundation, a group formed to further the work Anderson began. "I always had interest in our plants and animals," Sands said. "When Anderson arrived and contacted my parents, he sparked my interest to enter more deeply into it."

Sands now leads interpretive hikes for the public on a ranch her grandfather bought from a Marysville blacksmith: 1,200 acres at the heart of the buttes. Sands, 53, is the model of a type not often celebrated: the rancher/conservationist. She wears gold horse earrings and affectionately dubs cattle "my girls." She also cherishes wild birds and butterflies, and knows their names and habits. In meadows where she romped as a child, she can point out native grasses -- and noxious interlopers.

The Sutter Buttes' terrain mixes swales dotted by oak groves with steep spires of lava rock. The tallest tower is South Butte, at 2,132 feet; five other summits in this circular, 10-mile-wide cluster exceed 1,600 feet.

Although many other extrusions of magma sought to blow upward through the five- mile thick sediments of the Central Valley floor, only the Sutter Buttes, sited above a major fault line, managed to poke through the surface. About 1.5 million years ago, the magma pushed surface sediments into a dome, then ruptured the top.

The result is a picturesque, 50,000-acre anomaly on the typically flat Central Valley floor. Nisenen Maidu, Wintu and Miwoks shared the Buttes as a sacred commons, said Stan Padilla, who guides the foundation's cultural history hikes. The tribes also harvested acorns from the area's blue, valley and coast oaks, grinding these seeds to flour in mortars worn into the many andesite boulders.

In 1846, Captain John Fremont camped his 60 soldiers here, using the buttes as a base before hustling off to play a role in California's Bear Flag Rebellion. He found the buttes crowded with game; during his 10- day sojourn, Fremont was able to revictual with elk, deer and bear meat.

Now the elk and grizzlies are gone, but blacktail deer remain, as well as gray foxes, coyotes and golden eagles. A mountain lion occasionally might traipse through, using the buttes as a way station between the Sierra and the Coast Range. Clusters of bats are found in the many crevices and caves, ranging from North America's smallest (the western pipistrelle, with a four-inch wingspan) to the continent's largest (the western mastiff, with a two-foot wingspan). In addition, the buttes are home to a high density of arboreal, nocturnal ringtails. They're called cats, but are closer cousins of raccoons.

The flora of the buttes is a mix of coastal and Sierran species, with some odd presences and omissions. For example, there's no buckeye or chemise, and no digger (gray) pine, either. The only pine present is a lonesome Ponderosa on the north side.

In the 1950s and 1960s, access to the buttes was largely unrestricted, thanks to a laissez faire policy by area ranchers. But fences cut, gates left ajar and arson brought this policy to a screeching halt. With the public shut out, in the 1970s the buttes were on a short list of acquisitions desired by the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

The arrival of Walt Anderson helped scotch that plan. Concerned locals rallied around the concept of retaining private ownership, while offering controlled access for researchers, schoolchildren and tour groups. In 1989, Anderson's Sutter Butte Naturalist nonprofit firm was reborn as the Middle Mountain Foundation.

Today the foundation has 250 dues-paying members (half of whom are locals), and 4,000 recipients (mainly, veterans of the public tours) of its newsletter. Encroachment by developers who seek to establish ranchettes and trophy homes threaten the picturesque landscape. Remedies are thought to lie in a realm of land acquisitions and conservation easements. The foundation is striving to build political savvy and acquire fund-raising skills to enable these solutions.

Sands led visitors up a steep butte called Old Man Hill. She paused by an aromatic native plant called lavender bluetail. It's also known by a coarse but apropos common name, "turpentine weed." Sands stroked it, admiring its strong scent. "A plant this pretty has to have some strategy to avoid being eaten," she said.

High on a ridge, she shared an overview of the tawny, wild buttes, hemmed in by emerald rice fields -- Sutter County's sprawling, agricultural empire. "It's always worth the climb," Sands said.


Middle Mountain Foundation's fall tours start Oct. 28 with Stan Padilla's "In a Sacred Manner" trek, focused on cultural history. A geology tour is Nov. 12. Another walk is Dec. 2. All tours begin at 9 a.m., ending around 3 p.m. $30. Reservations: (530) 674-3172.

Groups also may schedule charter outings. Contact Margit Sands after 5 p.m., at (530) 846-5142. Cost: $250 minimum, or $25 per person in groups of 10 or more. All fees benefit the foundation's conservation work.

General information: (530) 634-6387, or www.middlemountain.org. Walt Anderson's book, "The Sutter Buttes -- A Naturalist View," can be obtained by sending an $18 check (includes postage) to him: 1964 Sherwood Drive, Prescott, AZ 86303.