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Cresco to Decorah the Long Way

Cresco to Decorah the Long Way is 38.7 miles of point-to-point riding through Howard and Winneshiek Counties in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 49 minutes; allow 70 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-4, Twisty: 66 corners, 145° of turning per mile, 1,879 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-4Twisty · 1.71/mi
Distance
38.7 mi49 min riding
Corners
6653% sharp · Tight
Climbing
1,879 ft49 ft/mi · Steep
Shape
Point-to-pointHalf morning
Roads
Backroads94% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

Start in the gentler country near Cresco and ride toward Decorah, and you’ll feel the land change under you. The valleys grow deeper, the climbs longer, the views more intricate. Decorah grew around a Ho-Chunk village and later became a center for Norwegian settlers. Luther College, founded in 1861, and Vesterheim, the national Norwegian-American museum, still anchor its character. Springs rise from the rock and feed the Upper Iowa, giving the region its clear, cold water. As the miles accumulate, the landscape grows more interesting—tighter valleys, longer grades, more frequent changes of light and aspect. A stop at Vesterheim or a Norwegian bakery turns the ride into a full cultural circuit. This point-to-point from Cresco to Decorah makes the transition from open upland to river country tangible in a single effort.

How it rides

66 corners over 38.7 miles — 1.71 a mile, and 145° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-4, Twisty on the five-point curviness scale. 53% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,879 feet in total, 49 feet per mile, between 833 and 1,302 feet — 469 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 280 feet over 1.5 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.0%. By Driftless standards that is steep.

Surface, speed and traffic

92.2% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 94% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 6% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 45% of the route. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.

Where to stop

2 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 4 fuel, 8 food, 4 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 38.4 miles. Worth knowing before you set off if your tank is small.

Listed alphabetically, and chosen by us rather than rated by anybody. The order you reach them, and the mile each one sits at, are in the app.

Worth knowing

Turn-by-turn directions and the spoken guidance are in the app. Every figure on this page is measured from the route itself — corner counts and gradients from the road geometry, elevation from the national elevation dataset, traffic from the state transport departments where counts exist.

Nearby roads