CHAPTER XV
Needles Road, Sylvan Lake, Harney and the Gorge
The road winds through the needle rocks, amid beautifully vegetated valleys and mountains to Sylvan Lake.
Cathedral Spires. Granite peaks in the Black HillsLease Photo
These roads are the much talked of feats of engineering skill. We can easily see why they are so considered. No barrier, no matter how formidable has proved indominable. In some places the road is merely a shelf on the side of a mountain. The rock is blasted out and the nice wide road, the perfect replica of our modern prairie highways, surfaced, is superimposed upon it. Slopes are gradual, the road wide enough for safety anywhere, and every other means of convenience to motorists has been considered. In one place there are possibly a half dozen switchbacks making it possible for a person to ascend a high mountain by gradual ascent on the shelf-like road, switchback and ascend more, almost straight above the road over which he has just come. You can look over the brink of the chasm and see several laps of the road up which you have come, and can look above and see the shelves built up there, over which you are to go before you reach the top. Marvelous, indeed, are the means that man through the divine guidance of a higher Being, we are forced to believe, has devised for overcoming the seemingly impossible problems. And the view from the road is marvelous. The great majestic stone mountains, the broad, deep, beautiful valleys, the swift tumbling mountains streams, fed by mountain springs, the so-called Needles, and last the sense of conquering all these, affords a feeling almost beyond description to the soul of the traveler.
The “Needles Highway” in Custer State Park
The Switchback on the Needles Road
A highway among the Needles of the Black HillsRise Photo
