Although the naming of this now mostly dormant hot spring cone was inaccurately derived, named by A. Bart Henderson in 1866, it is actually formed from deposits of travertine (calcium carbonate) and not soda ash (sodium carbonate), its name survived. Of interest, the location of Soda Butte is where the last of the wolves were killed during the government’s wolf extermination period of the past (around 1929) and was also the location where the first reintroduction of wolves to the park took place.