In 1985 the Rocky Butte Preservation Society was formed and by 1991 the Rocky Butte Scenic Drive District was entered into the National Register of Historic Places.  The iconic lamps at the top were styled after the ones at Vista House at Crown Point in the Gorge, and were installed in 1995 per the gusto from neighbors organizing, advocating and fundraising with the city.

Rocky Butte is an established landmark of the urban/natural divide in Portland, a unique place where metropolitan sprawl has carved into stubborn basalt and left a sector of forest. Being part of the Boring Lava field, it is a 612 ft high extinct cinder cone volcano and is one of many buttes in the area exposed by the Missoula Floods. This formation provided suitable hunting grounds for the Chinook-Speaking bands of Multnomah, Clackamas and Cascade/Watlala people who originally called it “Mowich Illahee” or “Home of the Deer”