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Highway 43: Winona to Rushford

Highway 43: Winona to Rushford is 27.5 miles of point-to-point riding through Winona and Fillmore Counties in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 35 minutes; allow 50 with stops — a quick spin. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 37 corners, 141° of turning per mile, 1,418 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-3Spirited · 1.34/mi
Distance
27.5 mi35 min riding
Corners
3738% sharp · Sweeping
Climbing
1,418 ft52 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
Point-to-pointQuick spin
Roads
Backroads100% county & local
Traffic
1,662vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

Highway 43 climbs from the Mississippi corridor at Winona into the Root River valley, forced by the land to follow long grades and open views. Rushford sits at the meeting of the Root River and Rush Creek, another historic mill town tucked into a tight valley. Even a state highway in this region has to negotiate the land rather than ignore it. The change from river-influenced country near Winona to the more interior Root River feel is gradual but unmistakable. Both ends of the ride offer strong senses of place; the middle supplies the elevation that connects them. Treat it as a scenic connector between longer explorations, or as a satisfying stand-alone effort that samples two of the region’s defining corridors in one ride. Clear topographic story from Winona to Rushford, honest climbing, and two towns worth arriving in.

How it rides

37 corners over 27.5 miles — 1.34 a mile, and 141° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 38% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as sweeping.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,418 feet in total, 52 feet per mile, between 650 and 1,349 feet — 699 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 531 feet over 3.8 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 10.0%. By Driftless standards that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 100% of it is back road rather than highway. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 56% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 30% of the miles — the median is 1,662 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 1.4 with 17,430.

Where to stop

2 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 7 fuel, 7 food, 4 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 27.1 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