The arithmetic, said out loud
The Congressional Research Service counts 99,698 federal acres out of 35,860,480 in Iowa. Fish and Wildlife Service 75,803, Defense 21,225, National Park Service 2,670, Forest Service zero, Bureau of Land Management zero. There is no federal forest road network to consult, no motor vehicle use map to download, and no agency here that grants a general permission to camp away from a developed site.
The state counts differently and says so. Its recreation plan puts 283,680 acres under the heading of federal lands, a larger number because it is measuring recreational holdings rather than land held in federal title. Both figures belong to the bodies that published them, and this page leads with the Congressional Research Service because that is the count the rest of the site uses.
The practical consequence is that Iowa has no back country in the sense the western states mean. It has properties. A trip here is a sequence of state forests, county conservation areas, Corps reservoirs and refuges, joined by the densest grid of public gravel in the country. Read the property rule at the gate, not the colour on the atlas.
Source 1
Seven landforms, and why the state looks flat from the interstate
The Iowa Geological Survey divides the state into seven landform regions, and only two of them match the reputation. The Des Moines Lobe in the north centre is a poorly drained landscape underlain by pebbly clay along with sand and gravel. The Iowan Surface to its east is gently rolling terrain with scattered glacial boulders left on it. The Northwest Iowa Plains are open rolling hills under an abundant loess mantle.
The other four are where a driver finds relief. The Southern Iowa Drift Plain carries steeply rolling hills and valleys shaped by stream erosion, which is the country the southern state forests sit in. The Loess Hills stack uncommonly thick deposits of wind-blown silt along the western border. The Paleozoic Plateau in the northeast owes its unusually scenic topography to a near absence of glacial deposits. The Alluvial Plains are the river valleys themselves, where rivers weave across the state eroding and depositing sediment.
Interstates 80 and 35 cross the flattest of the seven, which is why the state has the reputation it has. Every good road in this guide leaves them.
Source 49
The Des Moines Lobe, where the water has nowhere to go
The last glacial episode in Iowa happened only 12,000 to 14,000 years ago, when ice pushed into north central Iowa and halted at what is now the city of Des Moines. The Iowa Geological Survey calls the ground it left the Des Moines Lobe, and its most prominent patterns are the major end moraines: curved concentric bands of ridge and hummocky terrain that outline the maximum extent of each active advance. Three of them are named, Bemis, Altamont and Algona.
What matters to a driver is the drainage. The landscape is young enough that streams have not organised it, so the Lobe is full of kettle lakes, prairie potholes and other depressions that display only a subtly linked surface drainage pattern. The larger, more permanent segments of those systems became the present-day rivers and some of the bigger lakes; the rest simply holds water.
That is the reason the gravel and earth roads of north central Iowa behave differently from those in the south. A landscape that holds its own water has little relief to shed a wet spring into, so soft ground here arrives across whole townships rather than in isolated dips. The drift plain in the south has had time to cut itself drainage; the Lobe has not.
Source 50
Loess, and what it does to a road
Loess is glacial rock flour, ground fine, blown off the Missouri floodplain and stacked along the western edge of the state from about 31,000 to 12,500 years ago. The Iowa Geological Survey describes the result as sharp-featured topography with alternating peaks and saddles along narrow crooked ridge crests, with catsteps on the steeper faces where gravity has slumped the silt into stair-like terraces. The band borders the full length of the Missouri River valley in Iowa, generally more than 60 feet deep and 150 to 200 feet in places.
The material is porous, lightweight and easily eroded, and it still stands in sheer nearly vertical faces where something has cut through it. That is the property a driver notices. Roadcuts throughout the region hold those faces, usually as a single steep wall or stepped back in a series of risers, so a county road here can run in a slot with silt walls on both sides.
Soil erosion rates in the Loess Hills are very high and gully erosion is especially pronounced, with episodes of gully cutting and filling repeating over thousands of years. Read that as a warning about the lightly maintained ridge roads: the same road can change character between one wet spring and the next, and nobody is obliged to fix it.
Source 51
Area service B, and the roads a county has stopped grading
Iowa Code section 309.57 lets a county board of supervisors, after consulting the county engineer, sort its area service roads into three classes. Area service A roads are maintained to statute. Area service B roads may carry a lesser level of maintenance set by the board. Area service C roads carry restricted access and a minimal level of maintenance, must be gated or barred, and entering one after being asked to stay off it is a trespass.
The Department of Transportation’s instructional memorandum to counties fills in the history and the procedure. House File 768, enacted in the 1981 session, allowed counties to designate a lower level of maintenance for certain area service roads, which became known as level B roads, though the legislation set out no procedure for establishing one. The county association’s legal counsel recommended an ordinance rather than a resolution, because an ordinance is county law and carries public notice and hearing, and most counties have used one ever since. The level C class arrived in 1991 by House File 419, to limit access on roads that mainly serve adjacent farming.
Roads designated area service B must carry appropriate warning signs, erected and maintained by the county, at all access points from other public roads. That sign is the entire inventory. Iowa publishes no statewide mileage for the class, so this page states none, and no public map is authoritative about which roads are in it this year. What the sign tells you is that blading, snow and ice removal, mowing, brush cutting and tree removal are not happening on any schedule.
- 01Area service A: maintained in conformance with applicable statutes
- 02Area service B: a lesser level of maintenance set by the board of supervisors, signed at every access point from another public road
- 03Area service C: restricted access and minimal maintenance, gated or barred, open to adjoining landowners and officials, and a trespass for anyone else once asked to leave
Source 21
Fourteen byways, and which of them touch dirt
The Department of Transportation designates 11 state scenic byways and 3 national scenic byways, fourteen in all. The three national routes are the Great River Road, which also carries All-American Road status, the Lincoln Highway Heritage Byway and the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway. Together they cover the Mississippi shore, the middle of the state and the Missouri bluffs, which is a fair summary of Iowa.
The guide names a surface for exactly one of the fourteen, and it is the one worth planning around. The Loess Hills byway hangs 185 miles of optional excursion loops off a paved main route, and the agency describes them as ranging from interstate highways to gravel roads. Those loops are ordinary county roads, so their surface, their maintenance class and their condition are county business rather than byway business. For the other thirteen the guide publishes a route and a length but no surface, and this page marks them paved on the strength of their status as numbered state and county highways.
The rest of the network earns its place differently. It gets you across the state on roads that were laid out before the grid, through the two corners where the land is not flat, and past the small number of places in Iowa where a vehicle can legally sleep.
Source 24
Four state forests, and the permission they give that parks do not
Stephens is the largest, seven units and more than 15,500 acres across five southern counties. Shimek covers 9,448 acres in five units in the southeast corner along the Des Moines River. Yellow River holds more than 8,900 acres in six units in Allamakee County. Loess Hills State Forest runs 11,484 acres in four units above the Missouri. Six smaller forests carry no published acreage: Backbone, White Pine Hollow, Holst, Barkley, Pilot Mound and Gifford.
The state forest index page gives different acreages for two of them, 9,148 for Shimek and 10,600 for Loess Hills, against the 9,448 and 11,484 on the forests’ own pages. Both sets belong to the Department of Natural Resources and both are stated here. The state recreation plan totals the system at 45,246 acres.
The permission worth crossing a state for is free camping. The administrative code establishes camping areas in Shimek, Stephens and Yellow River, marks the backpack areas with signs and fire rings, charges no fee for a designated backpack campsite and accepts no reservation for one. Yellow River runs five backpacking areas of four sites each. Stephens has five pack-in sites in the Woodburn unit. Those sites have no vehicular access, which is the trade you make.
Where a vehicle can go, the forest campgrounds are cheap and plain. A non-electric, non-equestrian site runs twelve dollars a night at Shimek and Stephens and sixteen at Yellow River in peak season from 1 May to 15 October, ten and twelve in the off season, and the rate table lists no electric, water or sewer site in any of the three. Access into and out of a forest camping area is permitted from 4 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., after which only registered campers may be inside.
Source 6
The driftless corner, which is the other Iowa
The northeast corner escaped the last glaciers, and the Iowa Geological Survey calls it the Paleozoic Plateau: unusually scenic topography that follows from a near absence of glacial deposits, with abundant rock outcrops and deep narrow valleys cut through Paleozoic strata. The survey says the contrast with the rest of the state is unmistakable, and only isolated pockets of older glacial material survive inside it.
This is where Iowa’s trout water is, 176 miles of it by the count in the state recreation plan, and where the roads bend instead of running on section lines. It is also where the state put its most useful forest for a traveller. Yellow River State Forest sits inside this country in Allamakee County, and its five free backpacking areas are the largest share of the short list of camping in Iowa that costs nothing and cannot be booked.
Two of the state byways cover the same ground from different angles. The Driftless Area Scenic Byway crosses Allamakee and Winneshiek counties, and the River Bluffs Scenic Byway works the Turkey, Volga and Mississippi river country to the south of it. Both run paved, and both touch the same short list of overlooks that make the corner worth the drive.
Source 52
Effigy Mounds, and 2,526 acres you walk
Effigy Mounds National Monument was proclaimed on 25 October 1949 and covers approximately 2,526 acres above the Mississippi at Harpers Ferry. It protects 206 mound sites, 31 of them effigy mounds built in the shape of birds or bears. The bluffs it sits on expose Ordovician rock, the Oneota and Shakopee formations and the St. Peter Sandstone, with Cambrian sandstone in the oldest exposures along the Yellow River.
That single unit is most of the National Park Service’s presence in Iowa. The Congressional Research Service credits the Park Service with 2,670 acres statewide, so the monument accounts for nearly all of it, and what remains is not a landscape you drive into.
The monument is trail and overlook, with the Marching Bear Mound Group and Fire Point among the named places, and the visitor centre stands on Highway 76 at Harpers Ferry. Treat it as the anchor of a northeast Iowa trip rather than a stop on one.
Source 42
The river is a refuge, which is why the shoreline is not a campsite
The Fish and Wildlife Service runs the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge along the water itself, more than 240,000 acres of Mississippi River floodplain over 261 river miles from Wabasha in Minnesota down to Rock Island in Illinois. Iowa’s northern Mississippi shore, from the Minnesota line down to the Quad Cities, sits inside that stretch.
This is the reason the Iowa side of the Mississippi looks federal on a map and offers almost nothing to a vehicle. The refuge is islands, backwater and floodplain forest, managed in pools with closure areas that change through the migration seasons, and its access points are boat ramps rather than campgrounds. The state counts 203,000 acres of water in its border rivers altogether.
What a driver gets instead is the bluff line above it. The Great River Road runs the full length of the Iowa shore, and the overlooks the state byway guide points to at McGregor, Guttenberg and Bellevue are where the river reads as a landscape rather than a channel.
Source 48
Corps of Engineers water carries all the federal camping
The Corps Lakes Gateway lists six Iowa projects: Coralville, Rathbun, Red Rock, Saylorville, Mississippi River Pool 9 and Mississippi River Pool 10. Our build of the federal recreation database finds the 26 drive-in federal campgrounds under five project names, eight at Lake Red Rock, seven at Coralville, four each at Saylorville and Rathbun, and three on the Mississippi River, which our build files under Pools 11 to 22 while the gateway lists Iowa’s river projects as Pools 9 and 10. They are different counts of different things and both are stated.
The state’s own recreation plan reduces it to a sentence: the most recognisable federal outdoor recreation in Iowa is the four flood control reservoirs, Saylorville, Red Rock, Coralville and Rathbun. Those four carry 23 of the 26 campgrounds, and the 26 together hold 1,893 sites.
The Rock Island District’s own lake pages refused every request while this guide was written, so the figures here come from the Corps Lakes Gateway instead. Corps camping fees, stay limits beyond the federal regulation and water surface acreages are not stated on this page for the same reason.
Source 35
Saylorville, the reservoir with a valley behind it
The Saylorville Lake Project covers 26,000 acres and stretches for over 50 miles up the Des Moines River valley north of the capital, which is more ground than any other Corps project in the state puts on a map. Four of Iowa’s federal campgrounds are on it, in Polk County between Johnston, Polk City and the dam.
A 24-mile paved multipurpose trail runs through the project, used for biking, hiking, jogging, walking and in-line skating. For a traveller that matters because it turns a reservoir stop into somewhere worth leaving the vehicle for a day.
The same project is the clearest illustration of Iowa’s federal geometry. Twenty-six thousand acres sounds substantial until you set it against 35,860,480 acres of state, at which point the reservoirs stop being a destination and start being infrastructure that happens to have campsites on it.
Source 36
Red Rock, the largest lake in the state
The Corps calls Lake Red Rock the largest lake in Iowa. It sits four miles southwest of Pella on County Road T15 in Marion County, ten minutes from Pella and fifteen from Knoxville, and our build of the federal recreation database puts eight of Iowa’s 26 federal campgrounds on it, more than any other project in the state.
Beyond camping it offers shoreline fishing, interpretive programmes and a paved 13-mile hiking and biking trail. White pelicans pass through every spring and autumn and bald eagles gather in numbers through the winter, which makes it one of the few places in Iowa where a cold-weather trip has an obvious point.
Red Rock and Rathbun between them cover the southern half of the state for anyone needing a federal campsite. Saylorville covers the centre, Coralville the Interstate 80 corridor, and the Mississippi pools the eastern edge.
Source 38
The riding areas, and why your truck stays on the trailer
Iowa registers three kinds of off-highway vehicle and no others. An all-terrain vehicle has three to six non-highway tires, less than 1,000 cubic centimetres, under 1,200 pounds dry, and a straddle seat with handlebars. An off-road motorcycle is two-wheeled and built by its manufacturer for natural terrain. An off-road utility vehicle has four to eight non-highway tires or rubber tracks, a bucket or bench seat and a steering wheel or control levers, and comes in three types: 1,200 pounds dry and 50 inches or less, 2,000 pounds and 65 inches or less, and everything heavier or wider than that.
Read the list and a licensed pickup, wagon or van is none of the three. That is our reading of the state’s own definitions rather than a sentence Iowa publishes, because Iowa publishes no exemption sentence. What the state does publish is the consequence: off-highway vehicles may not be operated in any park, wildlife area, preserve, refuge or game management area except on designated riding areas and designated riding trails, and it is illegal to operate one on a Department wildlife management area at all.
Registration is the entry ticket. Every all-terrain vehicle, off-road motorcycle and off-road utility vehicle used on public land, public ice, a public roadway, a designated riding area or a designated trail must carry current Iowa registration, and a machine registered elsewhere must show its home registration plus an Iowa non-resident user permit. Dual sport motorcycles have to be registered with the Department to run at a designated riding area even though they are already plated for the road.
Source 11
Eight riding areas, mostly run by somebody other than the state
The Department of Natural Resources designates the riding areas and provides law enforcement, while clubs, county conservation boards and municipal governments do the managing. Gypsum City on the southeast corner of Fort Dodge is the largest, roughly 800 acres with 60 miles of trail for quads, side-by-sides and off-road motorcycles, run by the Webster County Conservation Board, with a 30-site campground open 15 April to 15 October and trailhead signs that say which machines each trail takes.
Bluff Creek at Eddyville is 350 acres of reclaimed coal mine with about 20 miles of trail, steep hill climbs, deep pits and four motocross tracks, and it is not currently signed open to side-by-sides at all. Tama is 300 acres of tight wooded trail with a 15-mile perimeter loop, ten electric campsites and thirteen primitive ones. Paul Huting at Waterloo is 180 acres along the Cedar River and states the 65-inch limit on its own page. Lakeview at Solon is 160 acres with no camping. Rathbun at Plano is 125 acres established in an abandoned rock quarry in 1993. Nicholson-Ford at Marshalltown is 120 acres of river-bottom trail. The Department lists River Valley at Council Bluffs as closed until further notice, with signage posted and all use restricted.
The state recreation plan totals 909 acres under the heading of ATV parks, well below the acreages the Department’s own reference guide gives area by area, because most of these parks are not state-owned. Both numbers belong to the Department and both are here.
Source 13
Seasons, and the weather that actually stops a trip
Water is the variable that decides an Iowa trip. The state climatologist calls April through July the four wettest months climatologically, and the spread between years is wide: 2023 finished at 26.82 inches statewide, 8.73 inches below normal and the 22nd driest year on record, while 2025 came in at 33.59 inches, still 1.96 below normal. Gravel, loess and the unmaintained ridge roads all behave differently in a wet June than a dry one.
Snow is variable rather than heavy. The winter of 2022 to 2023 averaged 21.6 inches statewide, half an inch below normal and the 57th snowiest in 136 years of records, and the winter of 2024 to 2025 averaged 8.8 inches, 13.3 inches below normal and the fourth least snowy in 138 years. Wind is the more reliable hazard. The storm complex of 27 July 2025, classified as a derecho by the Storm Prediction Center, logged gusts of 99 mph at Sioux Center, 92 at Orange City and Spencer and 83 at Cedar Rapids.
Drought is managed here on a published schedule rather than by improvisation. The Iowa Drought Plan has been in force since early 2023, run jointly by the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship and the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. It divides the state into five drought regions, assesses and reports them monthly, and uses four classifications: Normal, Drought Watch, Drought Warning and Drought Emergency. Look up the current stage before you plan a fire.
Source 54
Winter, and where the ploughing stops
The Department of Transportation covers more than 24,500 lane-miles of Iowa highway out of 101 maintenance garages, with about 900 snowploughs, 33 tow ploughs, 10 heavy duty blowers and 111 tractor and loader blowers, staffed by roughly 1,120 operators, mechanics and supervisors. In an average season it spends about 150,000 tons of salt at a statewide average of about 83 dollars a ton.
Ploughs typically run 24 hours a day, though at times fewer are out while operators rest, and with the blade down they work at 20 to 35 miles an hour. That is the machine behind the interstates, the United States routes and the state highways.
None of it touches a county road. The model ordinance the state publishes for area service B roads says in terms that snow and ice will not be removed, nor the surface sanded or salted, on a regular basis. In practical terms Iowa has two winter road networks: one that is salted, ploughed and reported, and one that is neither. Plan a winter trip on the first and treat the second as a summer and autumn network.
Source 55
The county conservation system, which is where most of the green is
Every one of Iowa’s 99 counties has a county conservation board, which the state says is true of no other state in the country. Between them those boards hold 193,624 acres of county parks, more than three times the acreage in Iowa’s state parks, and the Department of Natural Resources publishes a county-by-county list of the parks and recreation areas in the system that runs through all 99 of them.
The list is worth reading before a trip because it is the only inventory of its kind. It runs from wildlife areas and canoe accesses to full campgrounds and river landings, described by distance and direction from the nearest town, which is how these places are actually found. County areas carry the camping between the Corps reservoirs in most of the state.
The system also runs the biggest off-highway vehicle park in Iowa. Rules on county ground are set locally rather than by the state, so the board at the entrance governs, and two neighbouring counties can answer the same question differently.
Source 19
Refuges you can drive, and one you drive through an animal
Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Jasper County protects 6,000 acres and was established in 1990 to protect, restore, reconstruct and manage native ecosystems of tallgrass prairie, oak savanna and sedge meadow. Staff and volunteers have been replanting or reconstructing 4,000 acres of prairie on it, which is a rebuilt landscape rather than a surviving one, and the refuge says so.
Bison and elk live on it inside an enclosure the refuge road runs through, and the refuge treats that as the defining rule of the visit rather than a footnote. Five walking trails and a bike trail lead off the same road, and the land and walking trails are open sunrise to sunset daily.
The other drivable refuge is DeSoto, on both banks of the Missouri at the Iowa and Nebraska line, built around an oxbow lake that used to be a bend in the river. Its Bertrand Steamboat Visitor Center holds close to 250,000 artefacts recovered from the old riverbed, which is an unusual reason to plan a refuge stop.
Source 44
Passes and routes
-
Loess Hills National Scenic BywayPaved
220 miles of paved main route, plus 185 miles of excursion loops
The Missouri line in Fremont County north to Akron, along the Missouri River valley
The one drive in Iowa built around a landform. The Federal Highway Administration gives the byway 220 miles, suggests five hours to drive it or seven or more to enjoy it, and describes over 640,000 acres of landform with more than 10,000 acres carrying National Natural Landmark status and deposits taller than anywhere outside China. The State Archaeologist had inventoried over 1,500 sites in the region by 2008. The Iowa Department of Transportation adds the 185 miles of optional excursion loops, running the range from interstate highways to gravel, and gives the hills as 15 miles at their widest. 26
- Vehicle
- Any car on the main route. The loops include gravel and the Department of Transportation says so
- Season
- Open year-round. The loops are county roads and carry no posted season
-
Great River RoadPaved
328 miles in Iowa; 2,069 miles end to end
The Minnesota line above Lansing south to Keokuk, following the Mississippi
An All-American Road and a National Scenic Byway, and the longest continuous drive in the state. The Federal Highway Administration gives 2,069 miles for the ten-state route, allows six days to drive it or ten to enjoy it, and describes it as following the Mississippi for 3,000 miles from northern Minnesota to the Gulf. The Iowa Department of Transportation’s own byway guide gives the Iowa portion as 328 miles and counts eighteen national interpretive centres and museums along it. Effigy Mounds, Pikes Peak and the Upper Mississippi River refuge all sit on this line. 27
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Lincoln Highway Heritage BywayPaved
197 miles by the federal listing; 460 miles by the state guide
Council Bluffs on the Missouri east through Ames and Cedar Rapids to Clinton on the Mississippi
A National Scenic Byway following the 1913 Lincoln Highway, which the Federal Highway Administration describes as the first improved transcontinental road, assembled from existing roads, Native American paths, wagon trails and new pavement, connecting 43 communities in 13 Iowa counties. The two agencies publish different lengths: 197 miles on the federal byway listing and 460 miles in the Iowa Department of Transportation’s travel guide. Both are stated here. The state guide adds that the byway has a national wildlife refuge at each end and one in the middle, that more than 700 miles of trail lie in its corridor, and that it passes the Meskwaki Settlement. 28
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Driftless Area Scenic BywayPaved
144 miles
Allamakee and Winneshiek counties, between the Mississippi at Lansing and the Decorah country
The Department of Transportation calls this the most scenic state byway in Iowa and gives it 144 miles zigzagging across the landscape of the two northeastern counties the last glaciers missed. It threads the country of rock outcrops, deep narrow valleys and cold-water trout streams the Geological Survey calls the Paleozoic Plateau, and passes the Paint Creek overlook near Harpers Ferry, Dunning’s Spring at Decorah and Palisades Park. Yellow River State Forest and its free backpack camping sit inside the same two counties. 25
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
River Bluffs Scenic BywayPaved
109 miles
The Turkey, Volga and Mississippi river country of Clayton and Fayette counties
A state byway that plays hide and seek with three rivers, crossing them and then standing off above them, through a region the Department of Transportation describes as dotted with parks, caves, nature centres, fishing spots, campgrounds, trails and water access. It passes Effigy Mounds National Monument, the Pikes Peak State Park overlook near McGregor, the Motor Mill historic site at Elkader and the Guttenberg river overlooks. The state guide gives 109 miles on the byway’s own page and 119 in a stray line on another page; the 109 is the figure used here. 25
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Grant Wood Scenic BywayPaved
80 miles
Stone City near Anamosa east to the Mississippi at Bellevue
Eighty miles through the eastern Iowa the painter actually looked at, from his home ground at Stone City and Anamosa to the river at Bellevue. The Department of Transportation notes three state parks on the route, wetlands, caves, cold-water trout streams and the ridge on Iowa 64, and ends it at the Bellevue State Park overlook above the Mississippi. Maquoketa Caves State Park and the Hurstville lime kilns sit a short way off the line. 25
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Glacial Trail Scenic BywayPaved
36-mile loop
Peterson and Linn Grove on the Little Sioux River in northwest Iowa
A 36-mile loop through the glacier-carved country of the Little Sioux valley, which the Department of Transportation describes as rolling hills, forested valleys and surprising turns in a part of the state most people cross at seventy. Because it is a loop you can join it anywhere. The Prairie Heritage Center at Peterson, the Linn Grove dam area and the Fort Peterson blockhouse sit on it, and Mill Creek culture artefacts dating to around 1000 A.D. are held in the local museums. 25
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Western Skies Scenic BywayPaved
142 miles
Interstate 80 in the Guthrie Center country west to Interstate 29 near Missouri Valley
A 142-mile state byway that parallels Interstate 80 and joins Interstate 29, which makes it the most useful way to cross western Iowa slowly while staying within reach of fuel. The Department of Transportation puts Springbrook State Park, the Raccoon River Valley Trail and the Middle Raccoon River water trail on it, along with the Whiterock Conservancy and what the agency calls Iowa’s darkest sky for star gazing. Its western end runs into the Loess Hills byway country above Missouri Valley. 25
- Vehicle
- Any car. No fees
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Yellow River State Forest, Paint Creek Unit roads
More than 50 miles of multi-purpose trail, more than 40 of it marked in this unit
Harpers Ferry and Waterville in Allamakee County, off Iowa 76
The forest headquarters sits at 729 State Forest Road, about four miles southeast of Waterville or three miles west of Harpers Ferry, and the Paint Creek unit around it carries the four campgrounds: Little Paint, Big Paint and the Creekside and Frontier equestrian areas, all non-modern with vault toilets. Five backpacking areas of four sites each are free and first come, with no restroom facilities and no reservations taken. Seven miles of trout stream run through it. The forest covers more than 8,900 acres across six units in the driftless country. 7
- Vehicle
- Any vehicle on the forest roads. Chainsaws, electric and gas alike, are prohibited throughout the forest
- Season
- Campgrounds and roads year-round; the rustic cabin runs 1 April to 31 October
-
Stephens State Forest unit roads
More than 30 miles of roads and trails across seven units
Chariton and the Whitebreast country of Lucas, Clarke, Monroe, Appanoose and Davis counties
Iowa’s largest state forest, seven units and more than 15,500 acres of oak and hickory ridge in the Southern Iowa Drift Plain. The Lucas unit holds two ponds, three campgrounds and five miles of trail. The Whitebreast unit holds two stocked ponds, three equestrian campgrounds, a group camp area and 20 miles of multi-use trail. The Woodburn unit holds five pack-in backcountry sites that are free and first come. None of the campgrounds has electricity, all have pit toilets in or near them, and the drive-in campgrounds are fully reservable with a reservation required. 9
- Vehicle
- Any vehicle on the forest roads
- Season
- Camping year-round in the non-modern campgrounds
-
Shimek State Forest roads
Nearly 60 miles of trail across five units
Farmington, Donnellson, Croton and Keosauqua in Lee and Van Buren counties
Iowa’s southeast corner forest, 9,448 acres in the Lick Creek, Farmington, Donnellson, Croton and Keosauqua units along the Des Moines River. Four main campgrounds offer fire rings, water hydrants and pit toilets: the Lower and Upper equestrian campgrounds in the Lick Creek unit, eight sites at Bitternut Lake in Farmington and eleven at White Oak in Donnellson. The Keosauqua unit carries more than seven miles of hiking trail. The forest states its vehicle rule directly: motor vehicles must stay on public roads, all-terrain vehicles are not permitted anywhere in the forests, trails or roads, and snowmobiles are allowed only on designated routes. 10
- Vehicle
- Motor vehicles must stay on public roads. No all-terrain vehicles anywhere in the forest
- Season
- Open year-round
-
Loess Hills State Forest and Preparation Canyon
More than 60 miles of trail across four units
Pisgah, Little Sioux and Mondamin in Harrison and Monona counties, off the Loess Hills byway
Four units of 11,484 acres along the Missouri bluffs: Preparation Canyon at 4,068 acres north of Pisgah, Little Sioux at 3,752 between Little Sioux and Pisgah, Pisgah at 2,567 east of the village and Mondamin at 1,097, three miles east of Mondamin. The forest holds one of the only hike-in backpacking campgrounds in Iowa, in Preparation Canyon State Park, first come and first served with no modern restroom facilities. Brent’s Trail runs eight marked miles across the ridges and valleys, and the Scenic Overlook looks out over the forest, the prairies, the Missouri bottomlands and into Nebraska. 8
- Vehicle
- Any vehicle on the forest roads and the byway loops that reach them
- Season
- Open year-round; the visitor centre keeps shorter hours from November through April
-
Pikes Peak State Park overlook road
11 miles of trail from the overlook, plus a half-mile boardwalk
McGregor and the Great River Road in Clayton County
The bluff-top park where the Mississippi and the Wisconsin meet, standing 500 feet above the confluence by the state’s own measurement. The main picnic and overlook area is reached on pavement and carries a rustic stone shelter and two accessible gazebos. Eleven miles of trail run off it, including the half-mile boardwalk to Bridal Veil Falls. The campground has full hook-up and electric sites, modern restrooms, showers and a trailer dump station, which makes it the comfortable end of the driftless country. 18
- Vehicle
- Any car. Paved approach to the main overlook and picnic area
- Season
- Campground reservations are accepted from 1 March through November
-
DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge auto tour loop
The Missouri River bottoms between Missouri Valley, Iowa and Blair, Nebraska
A refuge road system around an oxbow lake that used to be a bend in the Missouri, inside 8,365 acres of bottomland forest, tallgrass prairie and wetland managed to imitate the original floodplain. Roads and trails are open from half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset. From 15 April the refuge opens more ground to the public, including the South Gate recreation area and the full auto tour loop, and through the migration season the route is shortened and the Green Heron Trail closed to keep waterfowl undisturbed. A paved section from the visitor centre to the Missouri River Overlook and Bob Starr Wildlife Overlook stays open all year. 47
- Vehicle
- Any car. Entry permit required at three dollars a vehicle a day or fifteen dollars a year
- Season
- Full loop 15 April to 14 October; the south gate closes 15 October to 14 April
-
Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge auto tour
5 miles, reached by a 4.5-mile paved entrance off Iowa 117
Prairie City and the Walnut Creek country of Jasper County, east of Des Moines
Five miles of refuge road across reconstructed tallgrass prairie, oak savanna and sedge meadow, giving an overview of the refuge and its bison, elk, deer, snakes, ground squirrels and birds. The drive passes through the bison and elk enclosure, and the refuge requires visitors to stay on the road and in the vehicle inside it. Five walking trails and a 4.5-mile bike trail lead off the same road. 45
- Vehicle
- Any car. Stay on the road and inside the vehicle in the bison and elk enclosure
- Season
- Open dawn to dusk year-round
Rules worth knowing
- There is no dispersed camping in Iowa, and the state defines the term against you
- The administrative code defines camping as erecting a tent, hammock or shelter of natural or synthetic material, placing a sleeping bag or other bedding on the ground, or parking a motor vehicle, motor home or trailer for the apparent purpose of overnight occupancy. Camping is permitted in designated campgrounds only, and no state or federal agency in Iowa publishes a general permission to camp away from one. Plan every night into a reservable site, a first come forest site, a county area or a Corps park. 15
- Fourteen nights, then three nights away
- On a non-reservable state campsite you may register for more than one night but not for more than 14 consecutive nights, and every member of the party must then leave the park, recreation area or forest campground and may not return until at least three nights have passed. All equipment comes off the site at the end of each stay. A walk-in camper taking an unrented reservable site may not occupy it before 10 a.m., registers for no more than two nights initially, then night to night up to the same 14-night ceiling. 15
- Backpack sites are free, and nobody will hold one for you
- The Department of Natural Resources charges no fee for a designated backpack campsite in Shimek, Stephens or Yellow River state forest, and the reservation system will not accept a booking for one. Drive-in forest sites are cheap rather than free: twelve dollars a night non-electric at Shimek and Stephens, sixteen at Yellow River in peak season, ten and twelve off season, with a four dollar equestrian surcharge built into the horse camp rates and a four to five dollar surcharge on the three big holiday weekends. 16
- Drive on the constructed road or not at all
- The state parks rules put it in one line: all driving is to be confined to designated roadways and is restricted to properly registered motor vehicles, and parking is allowed only in parking lots, with vehicles never left unattended on a park drive, roadway or highway except in an emergency. The administrative code behind it prohibits motor vehicles in state parks, recreation areas and preserves except on constructed and designated roads, parking lots and campgrounds. Shimek State Forest states the forest version: motor vehicles must stay on public roads. 17
- Six people, one unit, two vehicles, and a two-night weekend
- No more than six people may occupy a state campsite, unless an immediate family exceeds six and cannot logically split across two sites. Camping is restricted to one basic camping unit per site, meaning the portable shelter used by one to six people, though a small tent or hammock may join it. Each group may park one motor vehicle not used for camping at the site and, unless posted otherwise, one additional vehicle; everything else goes to designated extra-vehicle parking. Hammock straps must be at least an inch wide. From 1 May to 31 October a reservation for a weekend carries a two-night minimum on the Friday and Saturday, rising to three nights over the Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends and over a Fourth of July that falls on a Monday. 15
- Register the machine, and buy a non-resident permit if it is plated elsewhere
- Every all-terrain vehicle, off-road motorcycle and off-road utility vehicle used in Iowa on public land, public ice, a public roadway, a designated riding area or a designated trail must be currently registered with the Department of Natural Resources, with the certificate carried in the machine or on the operator. Registrations expire at midnight on 31 December and renew from 1 September, with a five dollar late fee and no grace period. A machine registered in another state must display that registration and an Iowa non-resident user permit, issued to one machine and not transferable. 11
- Sixty-five inches, a factory roll cage and a driving licence
- At any designated riding area an off-road utility vehicle cannot be wider than 65 inches, must carry a manufacturer roll-over protection system and manufacturer seat belts, cannot be home built or substantially modified from manufacturer specification, and its operator must hold a valid driver’s licence. Helmets are required for operators and passengers across the riding, parking and loading areas. Hours are sunrise to sunset unless posted otherwise, sound is capped at 96 decibels, alcohol is prohibited and you may only run the machine type the signs at that area admit. 12
- What the fees are and when you pay them
- Off-highway vehicle registration costs the same to start as to renew, with duplicates and titles cheaper, and the annual renewal period without penalty runs from 1 September to 31 December. A non-resident user permit costs a little more bought online than through a licensed agent, is sold from 1 September and expires on 31 December of the following year. Renewals go through the state licence system or a county recorder. A machine never previously registered has to start at the county recorder in the owner’s county of residence. 14
- An unpaved county road is open to a registered machine
- Iowa Code 321I.10 lets a registered all-terrain vehicle or off-road utility vehicle operate on any unpaved secondary road. A paved two-lane secondary road is open only over the most direct route to a park or trail, another authorised road, an authorised city street or the operator’s residence, and a paved undivided secondary road only where the board of supervisors has designated it. The same section opens state park road systems to registered machines wherever a plated motor vehicle may go. A county may close a road to them for up to seven consecutive days and thirty days a year by ordinance. 31
- On a highway: 35 miles an hour, eighteen years old, insured
- A person operating an all-terrain vehicle on a highway must hold a valid driver’s licence and keep to thirty-five miles an hour or less, and for every permitted use other than incidental agricultural travel must be at least eighteen and carry proof of financial liability coverage. The statute also makes an all-terrain vehicle a motor vehicle for the purposes of the traffic code, so it must carry the lamps and equipment the code requires: working horn, mirrors, headlights, tail lights, brake lights and a slow-moving vehicle sign. Interstates and four-lane roads are out. 32
- Level B roads are signed, not mapped, and the county owes you nothing
- Iowa Code 309.57 requires signs conforming to the uniform traffic control manual, erected and maintained by the county at every access point onto an area service B or C road, warning that it carries a lesser level of maintenance than other public roads. The same section relieves the county and its officers, agents and employees of liability for injury to a person or damage to a vehicle, equipment or contents that follows proximately from maintaining the road only to that standard. A level C road is gated or barred and becomes a trespass once a person with access rights asks you to leave. 20
- What minimum maintenance actually means, item by item
- The model ordinance the Department of Transportation publishes for counties sets out the level B standard in eleven lines. Only the minimum effort, expense and attention will be provided to keep the road open to traffic. Blading or dragging will not be performed on a regular basis. Snow and ice will not be removed, nor the surface sanded or salted. Mowing, spraying, brush cutting and tree removal will not happen, and adequate sight distances will not be maintained. No surfacing material is applied, shoulders and crown are not maintained, there is no road repair, uniform width is not maintained and regular inspections are not conducted. Bridges and culverts may not carry legal loads. 22
- Studs from 1 November to 1 April, chains when conditions call for them
- Iowa Code 321.442 prohibits any block, stud, flange, cleat, spike or other non-rubber protuberance projecting beyond the tread, with two exceptions that matter here. Tire chains of reasonable proportions are permitted on any vehicle when required for safety because of snow, ice or other conditions tending to cause a skid. Inserted ice grips or tire studs projecting no more than one sixteenth of an inch beyond the tread are permitted on any vehicle from 1 November each year to 1 April of the following year. School buses and fire apparatus may run them at any time. 29
- What makes a tire unlawful here
- Iowa Code 321.440 declares a pneumatic tire unsafe if any part of the ply or cord is exposed, if it has any bump, bulge or separation, if tread design depth falls below one sixteenth of an inch measured in any two or more adjacent grooves or wears to the wear indicators in any two grooves, if it carries a marking reading not for highway use, for racing purposes only or unsafe for highway use, or if tread or sidewall cracks, cuts or snags are deep enough to expose the body cord. Gravel finds every one of those. 30
- Burn bans come from the county, through the State Fire Marshal
- Iowa has no numbered fire stage system. Under Iowa Code 100.40 the State Fire Marshal may prohibit open burning in an area of the state during extremely dry conditions, but only at the request of a local fire chief, a city council or a board of supervisors, and only where an investigation supports it. Whoever asked for the ban may rescind it. Violation is a simple misdemeanour. A proclamation does not prohibit a permitted supervised burn, outdoor fireplaces, barbecue grills or a trash burner of metal, concrete, masonry or heavy wire mesh. 33
- Fourteen days in thirty on Corps water
- Every federal campground a vehicle can reach in Iowa is an Army Corps of Engineers site, so 36 CFR 327.7 governs all of them. Camping is permitted only at sites or areas designated by the District Commander. Camping at one or more campsites at any one water resource project for longer than 14 days during any 30 consecutive day period is prohibited without the District Commander’s written permission. Placing equipment or appearing at a site without daily occupancy in order to reserve it is prohibited, as is digging or levelling ground without written permission. 40
- Coralville is the Interstate 80 option
- Coralville Lake sits north of Iowa City, reached from Interstate 80 at exit 244 then three miles north on Dubuque Street and a quarter mile along West Overlook Road. The Corps describes three campgrounds with 500 campsites, alongside fishing piers, boat ramps, group shelters, mountain bike and hiking trails and lake swimming. Our build of the federal recreation database puts seven of Iowa’s 26 federal campgrounds here, which makes it the practical overnight for anyone crossing the state on Interstate 80 rather than detouring for it. 37
- Rathbun is the southern anchor
- Rathbun Lake covers 11,000 acres in the rolling hills of southern Iowa, 85 miles southeast of Des Moines on Iowa 5, with over 700 campsites across all operators, four of them federal campgrounds by our build of the federal recreation database. The Corps office address is at Centerville in Appanoose County, the same county that holds the Rathbun off-highway vehicle area. Not every campground on a Corps lake is run by the Corps, so read the sign at the entrance rather than the name on the dam. 39
- DeSoto is a fee area, and the permit covers the roads
- DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge is a federal fee area and a valid entry permit is required to enter the refuge, to travel on its roads or to visit the visitor centre. The refuge spans both banks of the Missouri across the Iowa and Nebraska line, 8,365 acres around DeSoto Lake, an oxbow that used to be a bend in the river, managed as bottomland forest, tallgrass prairie and wetland to replicate the natural floodplain. Federal recreation passes are accepted alongside the refuge’s own daily and annual permits. 46
- Effigy Mounds charges nothing at the gate
- An entrance pass is not required to access Effigy Mounds National Monument, and access to the visitor centre and museum, the trails and the ranger guided programmes is free. That is unusual for a National Park Service unit and it removes any reason to skip it. Plan it as a walking day from a base in the driftless country rather than as a stop between two other places, and budget the time the trails need rather than the time a car park needs. 43
- The mounds are sacred ground, and the Park Service says so
- Effigy Mounds preserves more than 200 American Indian mounds in the Upper Mississippi River valley, which the National Park Service describes as sacred to many Americans and especially to the monument’s 20 culturally associated American Indian tribes. Named places include the Marching Bear Mound Group and Fire Point above the river. Stay on the marked trails and keep off the mound surfaces. That is the whole of the visitor etiquette here, and it is the reason the monument is walked rather than driven. 41
- A county conservation board is created by a vote
- Iowa Code chapter 350 creates a county conservation board only after a petition to the supervisors and a vote at the next general election. If the vote carries, the supervisors appoint five residents of the county within sixty days, serving five-year unpaid terms, selected on demonstrated interest in conservation. The chapter authorises counties to acquire, develop, maintain and open to the public museums, parks, preserves, parkways, playgrounds, recreation centres, county forests, and wildlife and other conservation areas. Boards meet monthly and report annually to the supervisors. 34
- 511 does not cover the gravel
- Iowa 511 reports winter road conditions for interstates, United States highways and state highways only, not county roads or city streets, from 15 October to 15 April, updated every two hours or as conditions change, by Department of Transportation field forces. Its seven categories run from Seasonal, meaning generally clear with isolated frozen precipitation and icy bridge decks, through Partially Covered, Completely Covered and their iced variants, to Travel Not Advised, meaning the road has deteriorated to the point that it is very dangerous, and Impassable or Closed. 56
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
US Forest Service (USFS)
National Park Service (NPS)
US Fish and Wildlife (USFW)
Bureau of Reclamation (USBR)
Department Of Defense (DOD)
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)
Other Federal
State
Local
Alaska Native Lands (Patented or Interim Conveyed)
Alaska Native Allotment
Road
Primitive Road
Road
Primitive Road
Trail
Roads open to all Vehicles, Yearlong
Roads open to all Vehicles, Seasonal
Roads open to highway legal vehicles only, Yearlong
Roads open to highway legal vehicles only, Seasonal
Special Designation, Yearlong
Special Designation, Seasonal
Trails open to all vehicles, Yearlong
Trails open to all vehicles, Seasonal
Trails open to vehicles 50" or less in width, Yearlong
Trails open to vehicles 50" or less in width, Seasonal
Trails open to motorcycles, Yearlong
Trails open to motorcycles, Seasonal
Special Designation, Seasonal
Trails Open to Wheeled Vehicles Only < 50" in Width, Yearlong
Trails Open to Wheeled Vehicles Only < 50" or Less in Width, Seasonal
Wilderness Area
Wilderness Study Area
