Butler Valley (Arizona)

Butler Valley is a valley of the Maria fold and thrust belt in western Arizona, USA. It lies east of the Colorado River, and is south of the west-flowing Bill Williams River.

Description of valley and region

Butler Valley is one of the two valleys in a (major) three-mountain range, two-valley sequence. Other minor ranges are on the perimeters, but thirty landforms are part of the region. The valley drains southwesterly into the northwest flowing Bouse Wash Drainage. Cunningham Wash drains the valley southwest to meet with the Bouse. The valley also turns somewhat southwest to the north of the Harcuvar Mountains, where Cunningham Pass holds the 30-mile route, unimproved major access road to Alamo Lake State Park; the route traverses the Butler Valley in the northeast, then skirts the northeast of the Buckskin's to meet the south side of Alamo Lake.

The northeast third of the valley drains northeast from a water divide, then north to Alamo Lake only 10 mi distant; Cunningham Wash drains to the southwest. At the northeast end of the Buckskin Mountains, a basin forms attached to Butler Valley on the valley's northeast, and with the Black Mountains (Yavapai County) bordered northeast; southeast is another up-drainage basin attached to the northeast of the McMullen Valley, the Aguila Valley to the southeast, and at the southwest of the small range, the Date Creek Mountains.

3 major thrust-faulted ranges

The major mountain ranges that are thrusted northwesterlly in the Maria fold and thrust belt region are, from north to south:

• Buckskin Mountains
• Butler Valley
• Harcuvar Mountains
• McMullen Valley
• Harquahala Mountains

Some of the thirty landforms in the fold-and-thrust-belt listed in a circular path around these three ranges are: 1. NE, Alamo Lake State Park, NE Buckskin Mtns; 2. Access roads from U.S. Route 93, northwest, dirt, and southwest, Arizona State Route 71 terminating at Aguila, Arizona, at the northeast of the Harquahala's; 3. Southeast of the Harquahalas, three mountain ranges, and the Hassayampa and Harquahala Plains-(Harquahala Valley); 4. The southwest and west perimeter of the three ranges is the Bouse Wash Drainage; the drainage is in the Ranegras Plain, but two small ranges, and the Bouse Hills abut the perimeter as well; 5. The northwest abuts the Cactus Plain and the Cactus Plain Wilderness; 6. The northwest also has the Buckskin Mountains extending into a western section at the confluence of the Colorado and Bill Williams Rivers. Buckskin Mountain State Park is located here. 7. The Bill Williams River downstream from Alamo Lake State Park is the northern border of the three ranges, as well as the de facto border of fold-and-thrust-belt. The river is also a dividing line between the Mojave Desert north and northwest, and the Sonoran Desert, south and southeast; in California, the Colorado Desert subsection of the Sonoran Desert lies southwest.

See also

• Maria fold and thrust belt
• List of Bouse and Centennial Wash landforms

External links

• Bouse Wash Watershed Map