Existing comment:
Where Have All the Horses Gone?
Wild horses inhabited the North American continent more than 50 million years ago; long before man stumbled on to the scene. They looked very different then and were hunted by ancient man as a food source. The horse disappeared from North America during the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago.
Horses evolved into their modern form on other continents. Men learned that they could be domesticated and used for work and transportation. Spanish explorers brought these horses to the New World in the 1500s.
Three hundred years later, cowboys found herds of wild mustangs running free on the mesatop around Dead Horse Point. Men devised many clever methods to capture these strong, fleet-footed equines. If you were a cowboy in the late 1800s, how would you catch wild horses in this rugged country? You would probably look for a place to trap them so you could round them up.
Dead Horse Point provided the cowboys with the perfect horse trap. All they had to do was herd a band of horses out onto the Point. Then, by constructing a simple fence of juniper branches across the narrow "neck" of land, the Point became a natural corral. Here they could sort through the horses and separate the healthy, marketable ones from the culls or "broomtails."
Legend tells that one such band of broomtails was left corralled on the Point where they died of thirst within sight, but not within reach of the Colorado River, 2,000 feet below.
Wild horses no longer live at Dead Horse Point, but there are thousands of them in other areas of the West. Bands of these noble beasts still roam the wild and rugged lands throughout parts of Utah, Nevada, Wyoming and Colorado. They survive as a symbol of the freedom and wildness that has cast the legacy of the West. |