Great River Road - Iowa
Great River Road - Iowa is an All-American Road in Iowa. Within Iowa it covers roughly 320 miles. The map below shows its route. Use “Plan a drive” to open it in the Road Sorties route planner — already routing along Great River Road - Iowa with scenic roads turned on, ready to add your own stops.
The Iowa segment of the Great River Road runs 328 miles along the Mississippi from the Minnesota border to Missouri. It's an All-American Road strung with limestone bluffs and river towns, threading 10 counties and communities including Marquette, McGregor, Guttenberg, Balltown, Dubuque, Bellevue, Sabula, Clinton, Davenport, Bettendorf, and Burlington. Effigy Mounds National Monument and Pikes Peak State Park, both near McGregor, offer some of the route's best bluff-top views across the river into Wisconsin. Farther south, Burlington's Snake Alley, built in 1894 and often called the crookedest street in the world, and the reconstructed Old Fort Madison draw detours off the main route. In 2021 the Federal Highway Administration upgraded Iowa's stretch, along with seven other states along the river, from National Scenic Byway to All-American Road status, the program's highest designation. It's part of the larger 3,000-mile Great River Road system running the length of the Mississippi.
- 328 miles, 10 Iowa counties
- All-American Road (upgraded 2021)
- Effigy Mounds National Monument
- Pikes Peak State Park overlook
- Snake Alley, Burlington
- Old Fort Madison
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What is an All-American Road?
All-American Roads are the top tier of America's National Scenic Byways. To earn the title a road has to be a destination in its own right — offering features so exceptional, across several intrinsic qualities (scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological or recreational), that they can't be found anywhere else.