Bike Picker

Where this data comes from

Designations, years, intrinsic qualities and published lengths come from FHWA’s America’s Byways. Route geometry comes from two places: the US DOT scenic byways service (public domain) for 166 segments, and OpenStreetMap (ODbL) for 29. Each route says which it used, and the OpenStreetMap tracks carry that licence in the GPX file itself. The basemap is OpenFreeMap, also OpenStreetMap data.

Every route is measured along its geometry and checked against FHWA’s published length. 38 of 195differ by more than 25% and are marked. Those routes are not in the wrong place — spot checks against road maps put them on the correct road — but they start or stop short of the designated byway, so treat their mileage as approximate. 22 designated byways are missing entirely, because no published geometry exists for them from either source.

Turning on state byways adds 539 routes across 43 states and 41,331 miles, from the same US DOT service. These carry no federal designation and no published federal length, so 502of them were cross-checked against the archived byways.org records instead — an independent source with its own stated distance. The remainder are drawn from a single source and their length is unverified.