Singletracks may earn commissions from affiliate links and/or receive products from manufacturers for review. Read our editorial guidelines here.
If Ohio is an unlikely spot for mountain bike trail building to explode, Iowa is even less so. The Midwestern state is known for flat cornfields and rows of windmills, not topographical variety and wooded singletrack trails. But, as with Ohio, mountain bike trail access across the state is transforming rapidly.
One way to interpret this trend is that while states like Ohio and Iowa are definitely behind the curve, they’ve finally gotten on board and caught the wave of modern trail development pioneered by Midwestern states like Arkansas and Michigan, as well as Northeastern hotbeds like Vermont. The moral of the story is that mountain bikers live everywhere, and we all deserve to have great trails close to home.
Modern trail building aside, if you don’t live in Iowa, you’ll probably never plan a trip to ride here. But that’s ok: this list is mostly for the local riders. Even so, if you’re passing through on a cross-country road trip, you owe it to yourself to stop at one of these networks if it’s convenient. I did exactly that in 2024 and stopped to ride the fresh trails at Cone Park. It was the perfect break during two days of monotonous interstate driving…