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Postville and the Yellow River

Postville and the Yellow River is 41.9 miles of loop riding through Allamakee and Clayton Counties in Iowa — Driftless Iowa, the Upper Iowa, the Yellow River country and the climbs out of the Mississippi. Moving time is about 56 minutes; allow 80 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 49 corners, 101° of turning per mile, 1,523 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-2Easy · 1.17/mi
Distance
41.9 mi56 min riding
Corners
4949% sharp · Tight
Climbing
1,523 ft37 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
LoopHalf morning
Roads
Backroads64% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

Postville sits near the edge of the Yellow River country, where the land refuses to stay flat. The coulees of Allamakee and Clayton counties are steep and sudden; the roads that climb out of them demand attention and repay it with long views across wooded ridges. Springs and sinkholes appear where the rock lies close to the surface. Farms occupy the broader tops; the draws stay in timber. Riding here is a continuous conversation between open upland and hidden valleys. Light and temperature shift with every descent. The soundscape changes from wind to water. Traffic stays light because these roads serve local rather than through traffic. The loop doesn’t depend on a single famous landmark. Its strength is the repeated rhythm of ridge and coulee—the everyday texture of this corner of the Driftless around Postville and the Yellow River. Quiet, honest, and full of small discoveries.

How it rides

49 corners over 41.9 miles — 1.17 a mile, and 101° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 49% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,523 feet in total, 37 feet per mile, between 949 and 1,249 feet — 300 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 242 feet over 2.4 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 7.1%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

91.4% paved — the rest is gravel or seal coat, so check the surface before you commit. 64% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 36% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 26% 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 — 2 fuel, 2 food, 1 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 20.8 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