This narrow neck of land, though small, is central to the origin of the name Dead Horse Point. For decades, legends and myths about ghostly horses, cruel cowboys, and leaps of fate have surrounded the area, but the best-known tale is a legend from the late 1800s about cowboys working on the mesa. According to that story, wranglers often drove herds of feral horses across the bottleneck, where the sheer cliffs left them corralled. On one such drive, for unknown reasons, the cowboys selected the best horses and left the others shut in on the point. With the gate across the neck closed, the remaining horses were trapped without escape or water and did not survive, and those who later found their remains gave the place its name.