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Historic place

Needles Highway

SD Highway 87 (Needles Highway), Custer, SD

Governor Peter Norbeck personally walked and rode horseback over every foot of the route before a single machine touched it, deliberately routing the Needles Highway through the most dramatic granite spires in the Black Hills instead of the shortest path.

📅 1922–present🏛️ Scenic RoadStill hereBuilt 1922
Open on the mapSlide back to 1922

The story

The 14-mile Needles Highway (SD-87), from US-16A to Sylvan Lake, was surveyed on foot and horseback by former governor Peter Norbeck, who wanted it to showcase the park's wind-and-frost-carved granite pinnacles. Construction finished in 1922. The route is named for the "needles" — slender spires — that line it, the most famous being the Needle's Eye. Its single-lane Needles Eye Tunnel, blasted through solid granite, is just 8 feet wide and about 9 feet 9 inches high, too tight for many RVs.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Norbeck marked the entire route himself on foot and horseback, prioritizing scenery over efficiency.
The Needles Eye Tunnel is only 8 feet wide — many RVs and trailers physically cannot pass through.
The spires were shaped by thousands of years of freeze-thaw weathering, not human hands.

Connected places

Iron Mountain Road

Keystone, SD
Peter Norbeck

Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)

Lead, SD
Black Hills

Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway

Spearfish, SD
Black Hills

Sylvan Lake

Custer, SD
Black Hills

Custer State Park & State Game Lodge

Custer, SD
Black Hills

Explore the full web of connections on the map.

Nearby history

Sylvan Lake

Sylvan Lake, Custer State Park · 1.6 km away
This granite-ringed "jewel of the Black Hills" predates Custer State Park by three decades — and in 2007 it stood in for

Crazy Horse Memorial

12151 Avenue of the Chiefs · 6.3 km away
Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear told sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to k

Gordon Stockade

US-16A, Custer State Park (near Stockade Lake) · 8.0 km away
Twenty-eight illegal prospectors — including the first white woman known to enter the Black Hills — built this log fort

Mount Rushmore National Memorial

13000 SD Highway 244 · 8.5 km away
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum blasted 450,000 tons of granite off a Black Hills peak to carve four 60-foot faces — and died in

Iron Mountain Road

US Highway 16A (Iron Mountain Road) · 8.6 km away
Senator Peter Norbeck built three wooden "pigtail" bridges that spiral drivers back over their own road, and aimed each

1874 French Creek Gold Discovery Site

French Creek near Custer · 9.4 km away
On French Creek near this spot, prospectors riding with Custer's 1874 expedition panned the first flecks of gold that to

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needles_Highway