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Great River Road: Winona to Brownsville

Great River Road: Winona to Brownsville is 39.7 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 47 minutes; allow 70 with stops — a half morning. It is scored CS-3, Spirited: 55 corners, 159° of turning per mile, 1,492 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-3Spirited · 1.38/mi
Distance
39.7 mi47 min riding
Corners
5551% sharp · Tight
Climbing
1,492 ft38 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
Point-to-pointHalf morning
Roads
Backroads74% county & local
Traffic
1,070vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
65 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

This segment of the Great River Road runs between Winona and Brownsville with continuous Mississippi views, locks and dams, and the constant presence of the high bluffs. Brownsville remains a small historic river community; the land rises steeply inland from its streets. The same ancient floods that shaped the Iowa and Wisconsin sides of the valley created these Minnesota bluffs as well. Roadside pull-offs and accessible bluff-tops deliver the three-state vistas that define the Upper Mississippi experience. This is a ride more about sustained river presence than technical geometry; the scenery does the heavy lifting. It pairs naturally with inland loops that climb away from the water and then return. For a clear, continuous dose of the big river between Winona and Brownsville without leaving the scenic byway system, this segment is an essential piece of the Minnesota Bluff Country puzzle.

How it rides

55 corners over 39.7 miles — 1.38 a mile, and 159° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-3, Spirited on the five-point curviness scale. 51% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,492 feet in total, 38 feet per mile, between 634 and 1,295 feet — 661 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 557 feet over 1.5 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 10.9%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 74% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 26% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 65 mph, typically 55, measured across 56% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 33% of the miles — the median is 1,070 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 29.5 with 18,482.

Where to stop

3 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 8 fuel, 8 food, 5 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 28.9 miles. Worth knowing before you set off if your tank is small. Some towns on this road are not yet measured along the line, so treat that as the worst case rather than the likely one.

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