A spiral bridge, loop bridge, or pigtail bridge is a road bridge which loops over its own road, allowing the road to climb rapidly. This is useful in steep terrain, or where the approach road to a bridge would terminate too far from the bridge's end. In the Black Hills of South Dakota, a particular form of spiral bridge, locally called a 'pigtail bridge' was introduced in 1932 by Cecil Clyde Gideon, the self-taught superintendent of Custer State Park turned highway designer. He called them spiral-jumpoffs . During the planning for Iron Mountain Road, there was a need to negotiate sudden elevation drops while preserving natural features for this scenic highway; the corkscrew design allowed for a spectacular - although expensive - solution to this problem. In order to blend the bridges with their surroundings, natural materials such as local timber were used.