Northwest Iowa Is Quietly Building One of the State's Great Trails

Mon June 29 2026
Posted Jun 29
191

While the whole state is busy counting down to Dubuque, the folks up in the Iowa Great Lakes are putting steel and asphalt where their mouths are. The Dickinson County Bike Trail Association keeps stacking grants to knock out the missing links in what's shaping up to be a 135-mile corridor connecting the Great Lakes down through Storm Lake and beyond - a five-county effort that the state has formally tagged a Trail of Statewide Significance. That's not a casual designation. That's Iowa saying this thing matters.

Here's the latest on the ground: the 4.5-mile Clay County Connection is the piece in motion right now. A $295,000 state recreational trails grant is helping finish the link to Clay County this year, with roughly three more miles funded for 2026. The bigger Phase 2 segment - about two miles - is backed by a $930,000 stack of State Recreational Trails, Iowa DNR REAP, Okoboji Foundation, and Iowa Economic Development CAT money. Phase 3, the final mile that finally ties Clay and Dickinson counties together, is teed up for early 2027 with another $567,000 from Region 3 TAP and state trail programs. Translation: if you've ever wanted to ride safely from Spencer to Milford without playing chicken with highway traffic, that day is nearly here.

This is exactly the kind of patient, grant-by-grant, county-by-county trail-building that doesn't make statewide headlines but absolutely changes what it means to be a cyclist in rural Iowa. Every connected mile is one less gap, one more family that can ride to the next town, one more reason somebody buys a bike instead of letting it rust in the garage. Northwest Iowa is showing the rest of us how it's done - show up, chase the funding, and keep closing the gaps.

If you ride up in the lakes country, go thank a Dickinson County Trails board member. And if you've got a connection gap in YOUR corner of Iowa, let this be your reminder that the money is out there for trail builders who go after it.

RIDE. STAY. PLAY.