Let us follow the paved road from U.S. Highway 163 all the way to Dead Horse Point, which was set aside as a state park in 1957. The park has a visitor center, museum, modern campgrounds and picnic facilities, and piped water, which is hauled all the way from Moab. An entrance fee of $1 permits us to drive across the narrow neck to a parking area near the point proper, which is protected by stone walls and is provided with a ramada, benches, paths, and sanitary facilities. From Dead Horse Point we get breathtaking views in several directions, including a loop of the Colorado River called the Goose Neck, 2,000 feet nearly straight down. [Illustration: CANE CREEK ANTICLINE, looking northeast toward the La Sal Mountains from Dead Horse Point. Colorado River cuts across crest at middle right, above which is Anticline Overlook. (See fig. 31.) Jeep trail and part of Shafer dome lie below. (Fig. 13)] How did such a magnificent viewpoint get such a macabre name? Dead Horse Point was named for a sad but colorful legend concerning a band of wild horses that once roamed the high mesas. The point is really an embryo island separated from the mainland by a narrow neck barely wide enough for the present road. In the early cowboy days the island was used as a natural corral in which wild mustangs were penned up behind a short fence across the neck so that the better ones could be sorted out and driven to mines in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. A band of horses corralled too long without water allegedly died of thirst within sight of the river 2,000 feet below, hence the name of the point, or at least so one version of the story goes. Some versions allude to the wranglers as cowboys; others, as horsethieves.