ScenicCurvesHome / Routes / Minnesota / Root River Run
Root River Run
Root River Run is 29.3 miles of point-to-point 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 33 minutes; allow 50 with stops — a quick spin. It is scored CS-2, Easy: 34 corners, 112° of turning per mile, 607 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-2Easy · 1.16/mi
- Distance
- 29.3 mi33 min riding
- Corners
- 3453% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 607 ft21 ft/mi · Gentle
- Shape
- Point-to-pointQuick spin
- Roads
- Backroads100% county & local
- Traffic
- 1,411vehicles a day, median
- Speed limit
- 60 mphtypically 55
How it rides
34 corners over 29.3 miles — 1.16 a mile, and 112° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-2, Easy on the five-point curviness scale. 53% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 607 feet in total, 21 feet per mile, between 672 and 922 feet — 251 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 106 feet over 1.2 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 5.3%. By Driftless standards that is gentle.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 100% of it is back road rather than highway. Posted speeds run to 60 mph, typically 55, measured across 99% of the route. Where traffic counts exist — 14% of the miles — the median is 1,411 vehicles a day, busiest at mile 17.1 with 4,457.
- Backroads
- One way
- Low traffic
Worth knowing
- Fuel sparse — top off before you go
Turn-by-turn directions and the spoken notes along the way 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.