Needles
Interesting facts
- Herb Conn, one of the climbers who opened the Needles, spent a week every autumn for 13 years filling cracks in the faces of Mount Rushmore.
- Jan and Herb Conn found the Needles by chance in 1947 while driving through the Black Hills on their way to climb Devils Tower.
- The Conns climbed here in smooth-soled tennis shoes with an 80-foot rope tied around the waist, and usually climbed back down rather than rappelling.
- The couple settled beside the Needles and lived for some sixty years in a small stone house they built themselves, with no electricity or running water.
- John Gill's 1961 solo on The Thimble was graded 5.12a, among the first climbs of that difficulty anywhere; John Sherman repeated it without a rope in 1991.
- The protected Cathedral Spires area holds six ridges of pillars and an isolated stand of limber pine, cut off from the tree's main range farther west.
- Two neighbouring towers carry literary names, Khayyam Spire and Rubaiyat Spire; Fred Beckey and John Dudra climbed both in 1952.
- Climbing routes on the spires run from the easiest grades up to 5.13, mostly traditional crack and face climbs of one to four pitches.
- In the 1960s leading American climbers such as Royal Robbins and Henry Barber came to the Needles and left a string of bold new routes.
- The Needles draw roughly 300,000 visitors a year, making them one of the busiest corners of Custer State Park.
Why it is worth it
In the heart of the Black Hills of South Dakota, a forest of slender granite spires stands above the pines, some of them reaching about 500 feet (150 m) high. The Needles are what remains of a mass of granite and pegmatite that weathered along its joints into thin towers, fins and pinnacles. The most famous is the Needle's Eye, a narrow spire split through by a vertical slot; the tightest cluster, the Cathedral Spires, forms part of a protected natural area of more than 600 acres that was declared a National Natural Landmark in 1976.
The Needles were the first site proposed for the carving that became Mount Rushmore. The sculptor Gutzon Borglum turned them down: the granite was of poor quality and the spires were simply too thin to carry monumental heads. They found a different calling instead. Fritz Wiessner climbed the Totem Pole in 1936 and Khayyam Spire the following year, and from 1947 Jan and Herb Conn made more than 220 first ascents here over the decades. In 1961 John Gill free-soloed a route on The Thimble that was among the hardest climbs of its day.
Much of the area's fame comes from the road that threads through it. The Needles Highway, a 14-mile (23 km) stretch of South Dakota Highway 87 finished in 1922, winds between the spires and squeezes through narrow tunnels blasted in solid granite, including the Needles Eye Tunnel beside the spire of the same name. It is part of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway, named after the senator who championed the parks of the Black Hills.
Getting there
The Needles lie in Custer State Park on South Dakota Highway 87, the Needles Highway, which connects with US 16/385 south of Hill City. The nearest city is Rapid City, about 37 km to the northeast. The nearest airport is Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), about 46 km away.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Mount Rushmore 8.6 km · monument
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Needles of the Black Hills of South Dakota are a region of eroded granite pillars, towers, and spires within Custer State Park. Popular with rock climbers and tourists alike, the Needles are accessed from the Needles Highway, which is a part of Sylvan Lake Road. The Cathedral Spires and Limber Pine Natural Area, a 637-acre (258 ha) portion of the Needles containing six ridges of pillars as well as a disjunct stand of limber pine, was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1976.
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