Cycling Historic Sharon Wisconsin

Sharon Wisconsin is a quiet little town just a mile north of the Illinois border and six miles west of Highway 14 on Highway 67. To welcome bicyclists to their historic town, the Sharon Main Street Association-- with the help of PAC Tour, a cross-country bicycle touring organization headquartered in town-- has developed a series of bike routes for you to enjoy. They have laid out a set of six bike routes ranging from fifteen to thirty-nine miles long. The loops can be linked together so you can enjoy up to the full 137 miles of riding on the low traffic roads around south central Wisconsin and northern Illinois any time you like.

A number of businesses in the town give out the free touring packets with durable plastic coated maps and route sheets. The routes have color-coded road marking arrows that match the map colors so you do not have to keep your map in constant view. The maps are helpful because they call out rest stops and can give you an idea when you are going to turn away from the headwind you have been fighting all day. You can pick up a new map packet at the following locations:

Ed's Food Mart
Coffee Cup Restaurant
Sharon Ice Cream Shop (opens at noon)
Sharon Main Street Office (not open on weekends)

The friendly townspeople, business services, and well-planned routes make the series a great and easy way to enjoy a day of biking with friends. It is sort of like going on an invitational bike ride for free but you purchase your own food at the rest stops.

Sharon has a small town charm from the past that brings up images of Mayberry from the TV series. Old men sit on benches near the hardware store discussing solutions the world's problems. In Ed's Food Mart, a small mom & pop grocery store, everyone seems to know each other by name. There are no stop lights in the town, and the traffic on the main business area-- Baldwin Street-- is very light.

A few things have been modernized. Dickerson's Hardware store does have 400cx23 continual tires and tubes not found at most rural hardware stores. Also A'Nother Cup Coffee Shoppe has specialty coffees and pastries some may enjoy. But I prefer the more old-fashioned draft root beer and thick hamburgers at Big Dog's or the home style cooking of the Coffee Cup Restaurant. I don't often forget to visit the ice-cream shop. I have ridden all of the loops but one. They are on relaxing country roads with very little traffic. In most cases the roads are slightly rolling with no hard climbs but the Caledondia Loop (white) had me shifting to my third chain ring a few times. The route sheets indicate the amount of climbing of each loop. The Fontana Loop (yellow) is the one I haven't ridden, and it has the highest elevation change of all the routes. I would recommend full range gearing for the Caledonia and Fontana loops.

Long Prairie Bike Trail (green) covers a fifteen-mile paved trail across Boone County, Illinois. This recently black topped railway bed trail is ideal for less seasoned bicycle riders. The trail is lightly used and there is a large amount of wildlife and wild flowers to view. In early summer the trail is a great place to pick raspberries. The bike trail does no go through Sharon so if you have kids that you do not want to take the road you can drive there by following the Blue Loop road markers to a parking lot at the start of the trail. The trail rides through three small towns that can provide rest stops and refreshments about every 5 miles.

If you have a group of riders that want to pick up ride packets on the same day it is a good idea to call ahead to the Sharon Main Street Association. They will have the extra packets ready.

All marked routes start in downtown Sharon at the intersection of Baldwin Street (historic Main Street) and the railroad tracks.

Click here for a map showing where Sharon is relative to Madison.

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