Iowa
Towns of RAGBRAI 2026: What to know about the communities on the route
RAGBRAI 2025 riders share their excitement for the start of the ride
RAGBRAI 2025 is officially underway. We caught up with some riders as they prepared to leave Orange City on July 20, 2025.
From Boone to Dyersville to Dubuque, there’s lots to love on the RAGBRAI 2026 route.
The route for the 53rd edition of the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, announced on Saturday, Jan. 24, will extend 391.4 miles from Onawa to Dubuque. Along the July 19-25 journey, riders will stop in Harlan, Guthrie Center, Boone, Marshalltown, Independence, and Dyersville.
Here’s what to know about the starting, ending and overnight towns.
Onawa
Population: 2,906.
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Starting town: 1977, 1983, 1987, 1995, 2004 and 2018.
The county seat of Monona County, Onawa was named for a character in the 1855 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow epic poem “The Song of Hiawatha.”
Edy’s Pie, America’s first chocolate-covered ice cream bar, was created in 1920 in Onawa when a young customer of local ice cream parlor owner Christian Nelson had a hard time deciding whether to buy a chocolate bar or ice cream.
“‘I want ‘em both, but I only got a nickel,’” the boy said, according to the Iowa History Journal.
Nelson found he could make melted chocolate harden into a sturdy shell by adding cocoa butter to the mix before dipping a block of vanilla ice cream in it and putting it in a freezer. He also created a machine to dip the bars.
Nelson partnered with candy entrepreneur Russell Stover to distribute the product, branded as Eskimo Pie at the suggestion of Stover’s wife Clara. In 2021 the product was renamed Edy’s Pie to honor candy maker Joseph Edy.
On a less sweet note, from 1944 to 1946 during World War II, Onawa was home to a small prisoner of war camp for German soldiers.
Harlan
Population: 4,893.
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Overnight town: 1976, 1983, 1994, 2000, 2008 and 2013.
Harlan is named for James Harlan, a two-term U.S. senator from Iowa who served around the time of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He also was briefly U.S. secretary of the interior.
Milk & Honey, a local landmark, is a one-of-a-kind farm-to-table restaurant in a rural small town. Don’t miss its skillets, omelets and French toast.
Harlan was the hometown of DeWayne Louis “Tiny” Lund, a journeyman stock car driver who won the 1963 Daytona 500. Lund began his career at the local Shelby County Speedway, a one-third-mile dirt track.
Lund was given his ironic nickname because his 6-foot-5-inch 260-pound frame barely fit in the cars he raced. Lund won at Daytona while filling in for his friend Marvin Panch after pulling him from a fiery crash in a sports car race just days beforehand.
Lund was killed on Aug. 17, 1975, in a crash during the Talladega 500. The annual Tiny Lund Memorial Weekend at Shelby County Speedway celebrates his life and legacy.
Guthrie Center
Population: 1,593.
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Overnight town: 1974, 1983. Pass-through town: 1986, 2001, 2006, 2013.
Guthrie Center, on the far western edge of the Des Moines metro, served as an overnight town twice in RAGBRAI’s first 11 years. While RAGBRAI has passed through four times since then, it hasn’t repeated as an overnight town until this year.
The county’s first railroad, a narrow-gauge line, is now part of the Raccoon River Valley Trail that links with other central Iowa trails to form a 120-mile paved loop that reputedly is the longest in the nation.
Guthrie Center is the county seat of Guthrie County.
Boone
Population: 12,460
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Overnight town: 1975, 1988, 1998, 2011. Pass-through town: 1973, 1976, 2008, 2018.
Two iconic Iowa businesses opened their first stores in Boone. The Fareway supermarket chain, incorporated in Ames, began with a store in Boone in 1938 and was headquartered there until moving to the Des Moines suburb of Johnston in 2024.
Casey’s General Stores started with a single Boone location in 1968. Now based in Ankeny, it’s the third-largest convenience store chain in the nation.
Today both Casey’s and Fareway serve hungry RAGBRAI riders throughout Iowa.
Among Boone’s natives: Mamie Doud Eisenhower, wife of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
A railroad town, it’s home to the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad excursion trains and a railroad museum.
Marshalltown
Population: 27,591.
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Overnight town: 1974, 1994, 2004, 2012.
On July 19, 2018, an EF-3 tornado ripped through Marshalltown and damaged almost every building in the city. They’re now restored, including the historic courthouse, which took a heavy pounding from the storm, losing its spire.
Taylor’s Maid Rite, a franchise of the loose-meat sandwich chain, is a local, family-owned landmark at 106 S Third Ave., where it’s been in business since 1928. Marshalltown also is home of the nationally known tool company that bears its name.
Drone video shows extent of tornado damage in Marshalltown
Drone video shows the extent of the damage around the square and coliseum after a tornado ripped through Marshalltown.
Brian Powers and Michael Zamora, The Register
Independence
Population: 6,064
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Overnight town: 1982, 2007, 2014. Pass-through town: 1989.
Independence is appropriate place for RAGBRAI to celebrate during America’s 250th year. It was founded in 1847 when the Iowa Legislature moved the Buchanan County seat to the then-new site. With Fourth of July approaching, the village’s residents chose to name it in honor of the Declaration of Independence, according to the Independence Area Chamber of Commerce.
Built in 1854, the Wapsipinicon Feed Mill is a local landmark on the Wapsipinicon River. The current mill dates from 1867 and operated until 1976, when the Buchanan County Historical Society turned it into a museum.
RAGBRAI this year honors water towers on its logo, and the Independence water tower is an appropriately painted with a blue tank and red and white stripes.
With its broad patio, Denali’s on the River, northwest of town on the Wapsipinicon, is a fun spot to enjoy a meal and watch the river flow by.
Dyersville
Population: 4,477
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Overnight town: 1989, 2007. Pass-through town: 1983, 1993, 2010.
RAGBRAI riders can get a taste of heaven in Dyersville, the eastern Iowa town made famous when the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” was filmed on two farms just outside its boundaries.
One of the classic baseball film’s most memorable moments comes when James Earl Jones, playing writer Terence Mann, is befuddled by the ghost players on the baseball diamond that Kevin Costner’s farmer character Ray Kinsella has built amid tall cornstalks. He asks Kinsella, “Is this Heaven?” Kinsella replies, “No, it’s Iowa.”
In the decades since the movie was filmed, the site has become one of Iowa’s most popular tourist attractions. In 2021 Major League Baseball hosted its first game on a special field built next to the movie’s ballfield.
In 2010, the last time RAGBRAI passed through Dyersville, the route went right by the movie site. Major League Baseball will hold another game between the Minnesota Twins and Philadelphia Phillies at the site on Aug. 13, less than three weeks after RAGBRAI visits.
Dubuque
Population: 59,667.
Previous times on RAGBRAI: Ending town: 1974, 1983, 1993, 2010.
The first town founded in Iowa will be the last on RAGBRAI 53.
French trader Nicholas Perrot, one of first Europeans to reach the upper Mississippi River valley, established a trading post near modern-day Dubuque in the 1680s. About a century later, in 1785, French-Canadian explorer Julien Dubuque became the first permanent settler on the site of the town that would bear his name.
The city of Dubuque was incorporated in 1837, and attracted immigrants from Ireland and Germany. The archdiocese of Dubuque that served those immigrants remains the seat of the Roman Catholic church in Iowa.
Occupying a scenic site on the western banks of the Mississippi and spilling over onto the tall bluffs beyond, Dubuque’s attractions include historic architecture, a casino, the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium and a unique funicular railway that carries passengers from the downtown basin to a hilltop neighborhood.
Philip Joens has ridden parts of 20 RAGBRAIs. He has completed the river-to-river trek nine times. He covers retail and real estate for the Des Moines Register and can be reached at 515-284-8184 or at pjoens@registermedia.com.