[2] The county was established in the Dakota Territory on March 2, 1883, and given the descriptive name based on the French word for a hill.

The early human history of the Belle Fourche River Valley has been traced to about 3000 BC.

The first people of the area were Native Americans who resided on the northwestern plains of North America.

In 1979 and 1980, archeologists excavated a fortified and previously inhabited site west of Belle Fourche that dated to AD 1000.

The Butte County terrain consists of semi-arid rolling hills cut by drainages oriented NW-SE.

A relatively small portion of the area is dedicated to agriculture, including the employment of center pivot irrigation.

[5] The terrain slopes to the southeast, and its highest point is on the western boundary line near the SW corner: 3,865 ft (1,178 m) ASL.

Although Roosevelt in the following election and Lyndon Johnson in 1964, respectively, came within six and fourteen votes of claiming the county during landslide Democratic victories, apart from these instances, no Democratic presidential candidate since 1920 has reached forty percent of the county's vote.