Loess Hills National Scenic Byway: Butcher Road Connection
Loess Hills National Scenic Byway: Butcher Road Connection is a National Scenic Byway in Iowa. Within Iowa it covers roughly 4 miles. The map below shows its route. Use “Plan a drive” to open it in the Road Sorties route planner — already routing along Loess Hills National Scenic Byway: Butcher Road Connection with scenic roads turned on, ready to add your own stops.
Butcher Road Connection is the short link road on the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway that carries drivers onto the gravel Ridge Road Loop. It branches south from Highway 12 at Westfield, in Iowa's Plymouth County, and the drive itself is a quick lesson in how the Loess Hills formed: fine, wind-blown silt called loess was carried up from the Missouri River's floodplain as Ice Age glaciers retreated, then piled into bluffs found at this thickness nowhere else in the world except China. Plymouth County anchors the byway's northern end, just south of Akron, where those bluffs first rise dramatically from the flat river bottom. The connection is unpaved for most of its short run, a preview of the gravel and minimum-maintenance roads that make up much of the byway's 185 miles of excursion loops beyond the paved 220-mile spine.
- Plymouth County connector road
- gateway to the Ridge Road Loop
- loess bluff formation, explained en route
- byway's northern end near Akron
- gravel/minimum-maintenance surface
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What is a National Scenic Byway?
National Scenic Byways are roads recognized at the federal level for at least one outstanding quality — scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological or recreational — that gives travelers a reason to seek them out rather than just pass through.
Where to Stay along Loess Hills National Scenic Byway: Butcher Road Connection
No campgrounds are listed close to Loess Hills National Scenic Byway: Butcher Road Connection yet, but there are rooms near the route.
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