This small picturesque butte is immediately adjacent to the ruts of the
Sublette Cutoff about a mile west of the crossing of the Big Sandy and a few
miles north of Farson, Wyoming. Of minor importance, it is unusual in that
it stands alone on the flat prarie and is visible for many miles despite its
relatively small size. Forty-niner J. Goldsborough Bruff estimated its
height at eighty feet, but it is now greatly diminished in size.. Bruff
passed the butte on August 4, 1849 and wrote: On the right of the trail,
today, and near it, passed a singular clay mount, of buff colored clay and
soft sandstone, which I found contained fossils: digging out, with the point
of my bowie-knife, a fragment of a bone & piece of madrepore.² The
published edition of Bruff¹s diary contains his sketch of Haystack Butte. A
alternate segment of the Sublette Cutoff joins the main cutoff near Haystack
Butte. It had left the Fort Bridger route at the Little Sandy Creek
crossing, northeast of Farson.