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Dorchester and the Northern Ridges

Dorchester and the Northern Ridges is 38.2 miles of loop riding through Allamakee County in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 53 minutes; allow 75 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-5, Technical: 74 corners, 158° of turning per mile, 1,976 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-5Technical · 1.94/mi
Distance
38.2 mi53 min riding
Corners
7441% sharp · Mixed
Climbing
1,976 ft52 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
LoopHalf morning
Roads
Backroads100% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Open this route in the app

About this road

Dorchester and the northern Allamakee ridges offer some of the highest local elevations and the long sight-lines that come with them. The roads climb onto the upland in tight turns and short steep pitches, then run the crests before dropping again. Early Norwegian and German settlers left the churches and crossroads communities that still anchor the landscape around Dorchester. On a clear day a single ridge crest can reveal multiple parallel valleys fading into the distance—an unmistakable signature of this unglaciated country. The technical character is real; the reward is proportional. The higher you climb, the more of the region’s structure becomes visible at once. This loop is both a physical test and a geographic lesson. Bring legs and curiosity. The views from the northern Allamakee ridges will do the rest.

How it rides

74 corners over 38.2 miles — 1.94 a mile, and 158° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-5, Technical on the five-point curviness scale. 41% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,976 feet in total, 52 feet per mile, between 673 and 1,319 feet — 646 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 460 feet over 3.9 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.6%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

88.2% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 100% of it is back road rather than highway. No published traffic counts cover this route, so it carries no traffic figure rather than a borrowed one.

Where to stop

1 of the towns on this road has somewhere to stop — 1 fuel, 5 food, 1 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 38.1 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