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Witoka to La Crescent

Witoka to La Crescent is 31.4 miles of point-to-point riding through Winona and Houston Counties in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 43 minutes; allow 60 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 44 corners, 138° of turning per mile, 1,632 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-3Spirited · 1.4/mi
Distance
31.4 mi43 min riding
Corners
4439% sharp · Mixed
Climbing
1,632 ft52 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
Point-to-pointHalf morning
Roads
Backroads100% county & local
Traffic
769vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 45
Open this route in the app

About this road

From the interior ridges near Witoka the land falls toward the Mississippi at La Crescent in a sustained descent that makes the regional relief unmistakable. La Crescent’s apple orchards benefit from the milder climate of the bluff land. Hundreds of feet separate ridge from river; the roads make every foot of that difference felt. Timing the final approach for good light turns the geographic fact into a visual reward. The point-to-point structure emphasizes the topographic transition rather than a closed loop’s repetition. It pairs naturally with inland routes that climb the same ridges from the other direction, or with Mississippi corridor rides that continue along the river. Sustained elevation change from Witoka to La Crescent and the distinctive orchard landscape of the bluffs make this a clear expression of the region’s river-edge geography. Start high, finish by the water.

How it rides

44 corners over 31.4 miles — 1.4 a mile, and 138° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 39% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,632 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 8.4%. 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 45, measured across 22% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 34% of the miles — the median is 769 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 — 8 fuel, 6 food, 4 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 31.3 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