Over time they were slowly changed by pressure and heat into the complex variety of metamorphic rocks present today: schist, quartzite, gneiss, and several outcrops of white marble.

[3] Some of the plant species in the Wilderness - such as Brewer's spruce, Sadler oak, Siskiyou lewisia, and a number of sclerophyllous shrubs - are found only in southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.

Many species of birds can be seen in the Wilderness, including eagles, hawks, falcons, northern goshawks, owls, Steller's jays, and ravens.

By late prehistoric times, the Dakubetede Indians of the Applegate Valley used this area, probably sharing it on occasion with their neighbors the Shasta, the Karok, and the Takelma.

Arrowheads, scrapers, and other stone tools from several thousand years of human prehistory have been found in the Red Buttes Wilderness.

Prospecting and small-scale mining, along with trapping, hunting, livestock grazing, continued to bring local residents up into the Wilderness during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Forest Service built trails and a few cabins in the remote area, and during World War II, the U.S. government constructed a narrow mining road from the Klamath River to the chromite deposits on the south slope of the Red Buttes.