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Highland Mifflin
Highland Mifflin is 28.9 miles of loop riding through Iowa County 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 34 minutes; allow 50 with stops — a quick spin. It is scored CS-1, Cruiser: 28 corners, 101° of turning per mile, 1,022 feet of climbing. The roads it uses, in the order you ride them, are in the app.
- Curviness
- CS-1Cruiser · 0.97/mi
- Distance
- 28.9 mi34 min riding
- Corners
- 2852% sharp · Tight
- Climbing
- 1,022 ft35 ft/mi · Rolling
- Shape
- LoopQuick spin
- Roads
- 78% back road22% state or US route
- Traffic
- Not countedno state counts on these roads
- Speed limit
- 30 mphtypically 30
About this road
This is the old lead country of Iowa County, ridden at cruising pace. The loop strings together Highland, Cobb, Mifflin and Linden on county road and a stretch of WI 80, over ground that rolls steadily without ever demanding much. Linden is the one to slow for: it was called Peddler's Creek first, after the Irish peddler Patrick O'Meara, who made the first lead discovery here in 1827. The name changed in 1855, when the federal government refused to accept the old one for a post office. Mining after 1856 brought in trade of every kind, and the 1881 county history describes a thriving little village of 275 souls. Farming and mining worked the same ground side by side, and the miners cleaned their ore in wash places along the streams before smelting. What is left is a quiet grid of ridge and hollow road with the villages strung along it.
How it rides
28 corners over 28.9 miles — 0.97 a mile, and 101° of turning for every mile ridden. That scores CS-1, Cruiser on the five-point curviness scale. 52% of those corners are sharp ones, and the road reads as tight.
What it climbs
The road climbs 1,022 feet in total, 35 feet per mile, between 999 and 1,225 feet — 226 feet of relief. The longest single climb is 159 feet over 0.6 miles, and the steepest grade on it is 7.8%. For this country that is rolling.
Surface, speed and traffic
Paved end to end. 78% of it is back road rather than highway, the other 22% state or US route. Posted speeds run to 30 mph, typically 30, measured across 12% of the route. State traffic counts cover only 1% of these miles, too little to put a number on, which is itself a fair sign of how quiet they are.
- Backroads
- Loop
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.