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Baraboo Crawford Crossing

Baraboo Crawford Crossing is 40.3 miles of loop riding through Sauk and Columbia Counties in Wisconsin — The Dells Region, the baraboo hills, the lower wisconsin river and the ridge roads between reedsburg and spring green. Moving time is about 48 minutes; allow 70 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-1, Cruiser: 30 corners, 116° of turning per mile, 2,185 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-1Cruiser · 0.74/mi
Distance
40.3 mi48 min riding
Corners
3059% sharp · Tight
Climbing
2,185 ft54 ft/mi · Relentless
Shape
LoopHalf morning
Roads
72% back road28% state or US route
Traffic
Not countedno state counts on these roads
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

Baraboo is the gateway to Devil’s Lake State Park and the Baraboo Hills—home to some of the oldest exposed rock in North America. The bluffs at Devil’s Lake rise five hundred feet above a lake formed when glacial debris plugged an ancient river gorge. The surrounding roads around Baraboo and Crawford Crossing sample the transition between these ancient hills and the younger sedimentary landscape. A hike on a bluff trail or simply standing at the lakeshore turns the geological story into direct experience. The route’s value is both as a scenic and physical ride and as an approach to one of Wisconsin’s most significant natural landscapes. Pairing the roads with time at Devil’s Lake State Park creates one of the most coherent combinations of riding and deep-time scenery in the entire set. Old rock, high bluffs, and a lake that shouldn’t exist—worth the climb.

How it rides

30 corners over 40.3 miles — 0.74 a mile, and 116° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-1, Cruiser on the five-point curviness scale. 59% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,185 feet in total, 54 feet per mile, between 799 and 1,422 feet — 623 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 499 feet over 1.7 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 10.4%. For this country that is relentless.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 72% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 28% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 3% of the route. State traffic counts cover only 4% of these miles, too little to put a number on, which is itself a fair sign of how quiet they are.

Where to stop

1 of the towns on this road has somewhere to stop — 4 fuel, 2 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 26.9 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.

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 NASA SRTM, traffic from the state transport department where counts exist.

Nearby roads