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Prosper and the State Line

Prosper and the State Line is 33.9 miles of loop riding through Fillmore and Houston Counties in Minnesota — Bluff Country, the Root River valley, the Mississippi bluffs and the ridge roads above them. Moving time is about 38 minutes; allow 55 with stops — a quick spin. It is scored CS-1, Cruiser: 26 corners, 70° of turning per mile, 1,152 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-1Cruiser · 0.77/mi
Distance
33.9 mi38 min riding
Corners
2642% sharp · Mixed
Climbing
1,152 ft34 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
LoopQuick spin
Roads
Backroads92% county & local
Traffic
364vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
60 mphtypically 60
Open this route in the app

About this road

The quiet Fillmore County roads that approach the Iowa line pass through country that still carries strong Norwegian cultural markers around Prosper and Spring Grove. The terrain is gentler than the deepest coulee routes yet retains the characteristic ridge-and-valley rhythm. The state line itself is an arbitrary boundary drawn across continuous geology and culture. Riding here makes the continuity of the Driftless landscape across the Minnesota–Iowa border tangible. Traffic is light; the sense of traveling through a working rural landscape is strong. Ideal when the goal is to feel the regional coherence of the unglaciated plateau rather than to chase maximum elevation or technical difficulty. Open, continuous, and quietly revealing around Prosper and the state line.

How it rides

26 corners over 33.9 miles — 0.77 a mile, and 70° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-1, Cruiser on the five-point curviness scale. 42% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as mixed.

What it climbs

The road climbs 1,152 feet in total, 34 feet per mile, between 1,086 and 1,359 feet — 272 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 171 feet over 3.2 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 5.9%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 92% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 8% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 60 mph, typically 60, measured across 67% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 27% of the miles — the median is 364 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 27.0 with 3,365.

Where to stop

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

Longest stretch without fuel: 27 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