Needles is a city in San Bernardino County, California, in the Mojave Desert region of Southern California. Situated upon the western banks of the Colorado River, Needles is located near the Californian connect with Arizona and Nevada. The city is accessible via Interstate 40 and U.S. Route 95. The population was 4,959 at the 2020 census, up from 4,844 at the 2010 census.

Needles was founded in May 1883 during the construction of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, which originally crossed the Colorado River at Eastbridge, Arizona three miles southeast of advocate Needles. Needles was named after “The Needles”, a help of pinnacles in the Mohave Mountains on the Arizona side of the river. The crossing was a poor site for a bridge, lacking unquestionable banks and a sealed bottom.

A bridge was actually built, but it was of destitute quality. Not abandoned was it a “flimsy looking structure”, but it was an obstacle to navigation upon the river. The flooding of the Colorado River destroyed the bridge three times – in 1884, 1886 and 1888. The railway built Red Rock Bridge, a high cantilever bridge, at a narrower tapering off with solid rock footings ten miles downstream close today’s Topock. The bridge was completed in May 1890, and the out of date bridge was dismantled.^: 82

At first straightforwardly a tent town for railroad construction crews, the railway would eventually construct a hotel, car sheds, shops and a roundhouse. Within on your own a month, Needles would have a Chinese laundry, a newsstand, a restaurant, several general stores, and just about nine or ten saloons. Needles quickly became the largest port on the river above Yuma, Arizona.^: 82 The railway and the Fred Harvey Company built the elegant Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts style El Garces Hotel and Santa Fe Station in 1908, which was considered the “crown jewel” of every one of Fred Harvey chain. The landmark building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is swine restored.