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Mindoro Cut Loop

Mindoro Cut Loop is 73.5 miles of loop riding through La Crosse County in Wisconsin — the Coulee Region, the coulees, ridge tops and river bluffs of south-west Wisconsin. Moving time is about 96 minutes; allow 140 with stops — a full day. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 94 corners, 131° of turning per mile, 2,655 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.

Curviness
CS-2Easy · 1.28/mi
Distance
73.5 mi96 min riding
Corners
9450% sharp · Tight
Climbing
2,655 ft36 ft/mi · Rolling
Shape
LoopFull day
Roads
Backroads64% county & local
Traffic
1,800vehicles a day, median
Speed limit
55 mphtypically 55
Open this route in the app

About this road

The centerpiece of this long loop is the Mindoro Cut: a seventy-four-foot-deep passage hand-hewn through Phillips Ridge in 1907–08 with hand tools, wheelbarrows, and dynamite. It remains one of the deepest hand-hewn cuts in the Western Hemisphere and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The cut was built so creamery wagons from Mindoro could reach the railroad at West Salem more directly—an early road-improvement project driven by pure practical grit. The full loop also samples river-road scenery, big climbing, and the classic Coulee Region ridge-and-valley pattern. Stopping at the Mindoro Cut, reading the marker, and imagining the rock moved by wheelbarrow turns engineering history into a tangible pause on the ride. Few routes combine pure riding quality with such a specific, visitable story. Climb the ridges, ride through the Mindoro Cut, feel the effort that made the road possible.

How it rides

94 corners over 73.5 miles — 1.28 a mile, and 131° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 50% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.

What it climbs

The road climbs 2,655 feet in total, 36 feet per mile, between 645 and 1,262 feet — 617 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 441 feet over 2.5 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 11.2%. By Driftless standards that is rolling.

Surface, speed and traffic

Paved end to end. 64% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 36% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 55 mph, typically 55, measured across 29% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 26% of the miles — the median is 1,800 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 72.6 with 12,100.

Where to stop

6 of the towns on this road have somewhere to stop — 5 fuel, 9 bars.

Longest stretch without fuel: 60.9 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.

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