Dead Horse Point State Park Guide

This is the overlook people mistake for a national park, and it’s better than most of them: a narrow neck of mesa 2,000 feet above a horseshoe bend of the Colorado River, with the whole layered maze of Canyonlands spread out beyond it. The grim name is real — legend says cowboys once corralled wild mustangs on the point behind a fence of brush, and horses left behind died of thirst within sight of the river far below. It’s the closing shot of Thelma & Louise, and it’s thirty minutes from Moab on the same road as Island in the Sky, so there’s no excuse to skip it.