The Tuya Mountains Provincial Park was recently established to protect this unusual landscape, which lies north of Tuya Lake and south of the Jennings River near the boundary with the Yukon Territory.

This in turn is part of the Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province from Prince Rupert, into the Yukon and the Alaska border caused by rifting of the North American Plate as the Pacific Plate slides northward along the Queen Charlotte Fault.

Tuya Butte formed when magma intruded into and melted a vertical pipe in the overlying Cordilleran Ice Sheet.

The partially molten mass cooled as a large block, forming the highly developed hyaloclastite and pillow lava with gravity flattening its upper surface.

The volcano has no summit crater or obvious vent, suggesting the volcano was fed by a fissure, although several indictions suggest a vent location near a large cirque on the north face.