Overview
About Needle’s Eye
Why stop
- A natural opening and a narrow tunnel make this stop instantly recognizable.
Heads up
- The tunnel’s tight clearance excludes some vehicles.
Map
Where it is
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Custer Tour Guide
Your drive to Needle’s Eye, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Custer State Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
Recorded for this place
Needle’s Eye: The Rock and the Tunnel“Up ahead is Needle's Eye, a granite spire with a small natural opening beside the narrow road tunnel. It's worth a few minutes out of the car if there's space in the small pull-off.”
Plays as you drive up to Needle’s Eye in the Parkwolf Custer Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Little Devils Tower: The Summit Scramble
- Cathedral Spires: Roadside or on Foot
- Sylvan Lake: Rocks and Water
- Sylvan Lake Lodge: A Meal Above the Lake
- 82 audio storiesacross Custer’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Bison, Wapiti, Bighorn Sheep, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 40 trails, 49 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“We recently toured Badlands, Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore and more! We learned so much from this app as we toured each of these sites. The audio tours are worth the money.”
Guide
More about Needle’s Eye
The rock and the tunnelNeedle’s Eye is a granite spire split by a narrow natural opening beside the one-lane Needles…
Needle’s Eye is a granite spire split by a narrow natural opening beside the one-lane Needles Eye Tunnel on Needles Highway. It’s one of the drive’s signature formations, and an easy roadside stop to see both the natural eye and the passage cut through nearby rock.
Check the clearanceThe tunnel is only 8 ft wide and 9 ft 9 in high, so check your vehicle’s width and height…
The tunnel is only 8 ft wide and 9 ft 9 in high, so check your vehicle’s width and height before driving through. Needles Highway is 14 miles and takes at least an hour; leave time for the stops along the way. Visitors report a small pull-off near the tunnel, though its parking capacity is not established. The road closes to motor vehicles with the first snow and reopens no earlier than April 1, depending on conditions.
Weather carved the openingWind, rain, freezing and thawing slowly shaped the eye in the granite.
Wind, rain, freezing and thawing slowly shaped the eye in the granite. From below, the narrow opening shows as a thin bridge of stone between the tall spire and the main rock mass.
Norbeck’s routePeter Norbeck mapped the route on foot and horseback before Needles Highway was completed in…
Peter Norbeck mapped the route on foot and horseback before Needles Highway was completed in 1922. The 14-mile drive winds through granite formations, forest and meadows, making this stop part of a larger, deliberately slow scenic road.
Frame the eyeFor the classic photo, frame the spire’s small opening against the sky; include the nearby…
For the classic photo, frame the spire’s small opening against the sky; include the nearby tunnel mouth or a vehicle for scale. The pull-off is close to the formation, so the view doesn’t require a hike.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Custer
993 sightingsBisonMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
91 sightingsWapitiMost seen around 6 AMSighting map
258 sightingsBighorn SheepMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
85 sightingsMountain GoatMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
256 sightingsBurroMost seen around 6 PMSighting map
707 sightingsPronghornMost seen around 6 AMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Custer. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
