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Rossville Coulees

Rossville Coulees is 43.6 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 55 minutes; allow 80 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 48 corners, 91° of turning per mile, 1,551 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-2Easy · 1.1/mi
Distance
43.6 mi55 min riding
Corners
4840% sharp · Mixed
Climbing
1,551 ft36 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
LoopHalf morning
Roads
Backroads99% county & local
Traffic
—no published counts
Open this route in the app

About this road

Rossville sits in the heart of Allamakee’s coulee country, where narrow valleys cut deep into the plateau. The roads follow the classic logic of the land: travel the ridges when you can, drop into the shaded bottoms when you must. On a warm day the temperature falls as you descend into the draws around Rossville. The quiet is nearly complete. Farms still occupy the broader ridge tops; the draws remain wooded. Traffic is sparse because these roads serve local rather than through traffic. The loop doesn’t rely on a single famous viewpoint. Its strength is the repeated, intimate experience of ridge, slope, and valley floor. If you like rides that feel hidden and personal, the Rossville coulees deliver. No crowds, no spectacle—just the fundamental rhythm of the unglaciated country, mile after quiet mile.

How it rides

48 corners over 43.6 miles — 1.1 a mile, and 91° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 40% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,551 feet in total, 36 feet per mile, between 767 and 1,260 feet — 492 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 332 feet over 3.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 9.7%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 99% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 1% state or US 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, 7 food, 2 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 27.5 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