Butte Creek

Don't let this dry creek bed fool you, during the rainy season (which is any day in which the clouds build up across the eastern prairie) this pleasant sandy haven for rattle snakes can become a raging river at flood stage carrying rattle snakes and debris toward the Two Buttes Reservoir.

In his book Rivers of Wind, Gary Penley talks about flooding along the creeks in southeastern Colorado, sharing the picture of a small boy held tight by his mother and grandfather as they escaped the raging flood waters up the base of a rocky cliff as their home washed away.

Cottonwoods grow in the basin of the river, the only place they can gather enough water to keep their leaves green through the year. In high water, many of them break off and become part of the rushing debris.