The Wisconsin Rustic Roads program was created in 1973 to provide hikers, bicyclists and motorists an opportunity to leisurely travel through the state’s scenic countryside.  Rustic roads are rural, lesser-traveled, and in my opinion, a great way to experience a snapshot of life in Wisconsin!  

About These Files

As a professional cartographer and GIS data geek, I thought it would be useful to provide Rustic Roads data in several formats to anyone interested. I use these data myself as I travel Wisconsin’s Rustic Roads.

I use GaiaGPS to create GPX routes, referencing data from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation as a guide. I manually created each route using a path that takes you down every last bit of each road, even if it means some backtracking.  So, if you follow the route as I’ve designed it, you are getting my suggested path… right or wrong! I check the accuracy of the results against the maps and materials on the WisDOT site.  

The WisDOT data in shapefile format is okay, but honestly it has two weaknesses: 1) The DOT data was not created as a route you can follow. This is a big problem if you want to use the data in a GPS receiver or navigation software like GaiaGPS;  2) it appears the DOT data was compiled (created) at a relatively small scale.  This means the road vectors don’t line up with other map layers exceptionally well when you are following the route at a large scale (zoomed in).

Find an Error?

Contact me ASAP so I can fix the problem. Please provide as much detail as possible.  And do I really need to say this?  This information is provided without warranty.  I’m not liable if you are dumb and run yourself off the road or get lost!

Is Code More Your Style? 

Check out my Github repo for Rustic Roads where you can see the history of commits, fork it, and all that fancy Git stuff!

Also See

Check out this YouTube video series by Jason Safian, who is on a noble mission to travel and video all of Wisconsin’s Rustic Roads!

Google “My Maps” Version