Salton Buttes, Volcanic lava domes in Imperial Valley, California

The Salton Buttes are a 7-kilometer row of five lava domes on the southeastern shore of the Salton Sea in Imperial County, California: Mullet Island, North Red Hill, South Red Hill, Rock Hill and Obsidian Butte. Each dome rises 30 to 40 meters above the surrounding terrain and is no more than 1 kilometer wide. The Red Hills are the largest, joined by pyroclastic deposits, and Obsidian Butte has been extensively quarried.

The Salton Buttes were long mapped as late Pleistocene features, but newer dating showed that all five domes formed during the Holocene, mostly through effusive eruptions of viscous lava. They sit in the Salton Trough, a pull-apart basin between branches of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, where seafloor spreading and rapid Colorado River Delta sedimentation continue.

Obsidian Butte was quarried for its volcanic glass long before European contact, and the material travelled far beyond the Salton Trough. Tools and ornaments made from it reached communities across the Southwest, making the butte one of the region's key obsidian sources. Quarrying later stripped most of the dome's original shape.

Access to the site is limited since the volcanic domes sit on private land and are best viewed from a distance. Visitors can observe the formations most easily from vantage points around the Imperial Valley area.

Obsidian Butte, the southernmost dome, was quarried so heavily that it lost most of its original shape, while Mullet Island shows an "onion-skin" foliation in its lava and has hot springs and mofettes. The chain also sits above one of the hottest geothermal fields on Earth, 360 °C at 1.5–2.5 km depth.