Village of Milo

The Legend of Coffin Handle Butte

The boy took his saddle horse and went out to the cattle to speed up the stragglers. He was never seen again.

What happened in that blizzard can only be conjectured. The boy and horse were caught in that trap of lethal cold, knifing wind in unmarked prairie and satanic blackness. They drifted hour after hour all night and on into the next day. The more than half frozen boy, on his spent horse, pushed on through the snow up the gentle slope of an unknown hill 40 miles from home; in the middle of nowhere. When they came to the east rim of a butte they could go no farther without falling off the steep side. The horse collapsed.

When the weather cleared, a search widening each day and continuing all winter, turned up no sign of boy or horse. In the spring the remains of a boy and his horse were found on a far-away hill. His anguished parents brought a buckboard and a coffin. In the sad business that followed,- one of the handles of the coffin broke off. They left the broken coffin handle on a flat rock at the east rim of the butte; which ever since has been known as Coffin Handle Butte.

Interesting enough the Legend was proven to be true when a coffin handle was found on May 5th, 1990, when they were having a memorial service for Bob Knight, who loved to ride his own horse to Coffin Handle Butte. A memorial in the form of a huge granite rock - weighing approximately one ton, with a plaque attached and a barbed wire wreath, sage grasses, rope and one of Bob's old boots (top down to keep out rain and snow), now sits on top of Coffin Handle Butte.