CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 38 km loop that starts and ends near Custer, about 37 min of riding. It goes by way of Needles Highway, Needles Eye, Mount Rushmore and Iron Mountain Road. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 10 km this is Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Custer sits on the southern flank of the Black Hills of South Dakota, a small town in a big forest, and it makes a fine base for some of the best motorcycle roads in the Midwest. It was named for Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, whose 1874 expedition confirmed gold in the hills, and the rush that followed was one of the sparks of the war with the Lakota, for whom these hills, the Paha Sapa, are sacred. That history is not far below the surface anywhere around here, and it is worth keeping in mind.
Read the complete Custer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Custer is where the day begins. Next is Needles Highway.
South Dakota Highway 87 is the road that Peter Norbeck wanted, and he was not a man to leave a line on a map to chance. The governor and later senator, a great lover of the Black Hills, scouted the route on foot and horseback around 1919, and the engineers did their best to follow his choices, blasting through granite where they had to. The result is a narrow road that threads through towering granite spires, the needles that give the highway its name, and passes through tunnels barely wide enough for a car. For a motorcyclist, it is one of the great short roads of the American Midwest.
Read the complete Needles Highway write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Needles Highway comes up about 10 km into the recorded legs. Next is Needles Eye.
The Needles Eye is a rock needle, a pillar of weathered granite with a slot through it, and the road beside it passes through a tunnel so narrow that riders have a story to tell about it. The tunnel is a little over eight feet wide, and wide handlebars and panniers need a steady hand and a slow approach. It forms part of the Needles Highway, South Dakota Highway 87, which the South Dakota politician Peter Norbeck laid out on foot and horseback in the early 1920s, choosing the line himself through the granite spires of Custer State Park.
Read the complete Needles Eye write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 10 km into the recorded legs you reach Needles Eye. Next is Mount Rushmore.
Mount Rushmore is the sort of landmark that people expect to be smaller, and then they stand beneath it and find that it is larger than they imagined. The faces of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, each about sixty feet high, were carved into the granite between 1927 and 1941 under the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, with the help of around four hundred workers who drilled, blasted and hand-finished the stone. The monument draws millions of visitors a year, and a small fee is charged for parking.
Read the complete Mount Rushmore write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mount Rushmore, about halfway. Next is Iron Mountain Road.
Iron Mountain Road is the showpiece of the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway, and it was designed as such. Norbeck and his engineer, working in the 1930s, wanted a road that would pull travellers slowly through the Black Hills and deliver them to sudden views, and they got it. Wooden pigtail bridges loop over themselves to gain height, tunnels are placed so that a carved presidential face appears in the frame at the end, and the road twists along a ridge with the forest falling away on either side.
Read the complete Iron Mountain Road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Iron Mountain Road sits at 30 km, late in the day. Next is Custer.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Custer write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 38 km.
Custer → Needles Highway is 10 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Needles Eye → Mount Rushmore is 8 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mount Rushmore → Iron Mountain Road is 11 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Iron Mountain Road → Custer is 9 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.