History

The overlook was a product of the 1966 round of federal highway beautification funds, from which Onteoka County received $18,400 — enough, the Board of Supervisors noted, for grading, a guardrail, five parking spaces, and one panel frame. The county engineer selected the site on County Route 9 for its unobstructed exposure across the Teasdale valley. What the county did not know, because the two applications were processed by different offices, was that the state Department of Transportation had already broken ground directly opposite, on the valley's celebrated eastern rim, with a budget of $310,000, paved walkways, restrooms, and a bronze relief map. The county overlook opened in October 1968, eleven months after the state's, facing it.

The consequences of the geography were understood immediately. The valley's admired prospect — the ridgeline, the falls, the autumn color for which Teasdale Notch prints its brochure — is visible only from the state facility, which faces west. The county facility faces east, toward the state facility. A 1969 motion to regrade the parking area and angle visitors southward was tabled when the engineer reported that the southward view was the gravel bank. The Board instead adopted the position, recorded in its minutes of March 4, 1969, that 'an overlook overlooks; the statute does not specify what.' The guardrail was painted, the panel frame was installed empty, and the matter was considered closed for some time.

For its first thirteen years the overlook had a panel frame and no panel, the commissioned text on valley geology having been judged 'not visible from this side' by the historical society asked to write it. In 1981 the Onteoka County Historical Society produced the current panel at a cost of $1,140. It describes the state overlook: its dimensions, its visitor capacity, its restroom count, and its 1967 dedication. A lower text block reproduces the state overlook's own interpretive panel in full, 'so that visitors here may know what is known there.' When the state revised its panel in 2003, the county revised its panel in 2004, quoting the revision and noting the change.

Maintenance has been steady if modest. A 1977 washout closed County Route 9 for a season, during which the state overlook recorded its highest attendance to date, a coincidence neither body has characterized. The original guardrail was replaced in 1994 for $6,200 following a state inspection the county had not requested. In 1996 the Teasdale Notch Lions Club installed a coin-operated binocular viewer fixed on a heading of 262 degrees, pre-aimed at the state overlook's observation rail; the Lions retain the quarters and re-grease the mechanism each spring. Attendance is not formally counted, but the honor-box postcard rack requires restocking roughly monthly in summer, which the county accepts as data.

Local Legends

Some residents maintain that on clear mornings the text of the state overlook's panel can be read from the county side through the Lions Club viewer, and that the 2003 revision was known in Teasdale Notch before it was announced. The Lions Club states only that the viewer's optics are 'adequate.'

It is widely repeated that the county was offered the eastern site first, in 1961, and traded it away for consideration involving a salt shed. No documentation supports this, and the salt shed in question predates the alleged trade, but the story survives every correction.

Visitors at the state overlook are said to wave first. Regulars on the county side dispute this, and note that from that distance it is difficult to establish who started it.

The Controversy

In 1988 the state Department of Transportation declined the county's request for a 'SCENIC OVERLOOK' advance sign on Route 9, on the grounds that the view consists principally of another facility's infrastructure and therefore did not meet the department's published definition of 'scenic.' The county appealed; the department offered 'OVERLOOK' without modifier; the county countered with 'VIEW AREA'; the department's sign shop, which had already fabricated the unmodified version, prevailed. The sign reads OVERLOOK 500 FT and is, both parties agree, accurate.

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