FREE Bike Trail Maps

This page is dedicated to FREE bike trail maps and information. If you have visited other pages on this site you will know that I live in Illinois and have quite a bit of Illinois and Wisconsin bike trail information. Although most of the links here are for Illinois and Wisconsin bike trails, I believe that you will find that the free bike trail map information included here will be relevant to your location as well.

Most free bike maps are available through various government (state, county and municipal) web sites. Many of these websites offer free bike trail maps in PDF or other printable or downloadable formats. Often, there will be an option to request hardcopy versions of the bike maps to be mailed to your street address.

PDF Bike Map Viewing and Printing Hints:

The PDF bike maps are great FREE bike trail maps. They are just not as nice as having the hardcopy. You will need to choose the section of the map that you need, then set the PDF view to 100% (or more, to read in some cases)). Once you have selected and resized the section that you need, choose "current view" in the print menu and print that section.

Free Illinois Bike Maps

The Illinois Department of Transportation (idot) site has the best FREE Illinois Bike Maps that I have found to date! Unfortunately, as of Fall of 2008 I have discovered that the option to order free hardcopy bike maps has been disabled (temporarily, I hope). I think my favorite map, for our area, is the "Illinois Official Bicycle Map Chicago/Northeastern Illinois ".

While the option to request the free hardcopy Illinois bike maps, from the idot link above, is temporarily disabled, you can still get PDF copies of these maps at: http://www.dot.il.gov/bikemap/state3.html (I will check for the hardcopy map availability from time to time and update this page if I find them available again).

The Lake Count Forest Preserve web site has great online maps in the bicycling area (choose Publications > Trail Maps).

The Cook County Preserve web site has great online maps in the bicycling area (choose Recreation > Bicycling).

The Kane County DOT web site has an option to request free hardcopy bike maps or you can select Kane County PDF Bike Maps here.

The City of Chicago DOT web site has an option to request free hardcopy Chicago bike maps in addition to an online Chicago bike map option.

Dupage County also offers free hardcopy and PDF bike trail maps.

* In some cases I do not include the direct links to the bicycling pages or map pages because these sites have a tendency to change periodically which breaks the links and just causes frustration. If you go to the main site though it is usually not too difficult to find the maps with the hints that I've given above.

Some of the best free maps that I have found for Illinois are by county. Unfortunately, county lines are not always at convenient starting and stopping ride locations so you may need to go to multiple county web sites to get a series of connecting trail maps.

I have found that, even with the full printed maps, I would usually scan the section that I needed for the trail or trails that I would be riding, print them and bring the printouts on my ride. I really prefer to have an 8x10 paper map of the exact area that I needed for each ride rather than pull out and unfold a large map every time I need to reference where I was.

Free Wisconsin Bike Maps

The Wisconsin DOT web site has free online (only) bike trail maps of all Wisconsin counties.

Other Free Bike Map Options:

Free bike maps are sometimes available at municipal buildings or if you are traveling on the interstate, you may be able to pickup some free bike trail maps at the welcome centers for some states.

About-Bicycles.com - Bike Trail Photos

If you are looking for photos of the trails, come back to this site Bike Trails page). I believe that we have one of the more extensive and better collections of bike trail photos for the bike trails in northeastern Illinois and quite a few Wisconsin trails too!

That's all I have right now, but I'll be adding more as I discover them. If you have more free bike map resources please let me know... (Rob at about-bicycles@homekat.com)

If you are aware of the fact that the state, county and municipal web sites usually have the best free bike trail maps, it can really help you to filter your online searches to the truly free maps.

There are quite a few fantastic internet resources for FREE bikes maps, but they can be hard to find with a typical Google or Yahoo search since all of the bike sites that are SELLING bike trail maps try hard to get to the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) for phrases like "FREE Bike Trail Maps", "Free Bicycle Trail maps", etc. So, I decided to start a page dedicated to truly free bike trail maps and information.

Although this bike site does have some commercial pages and resources (primarily helpful links to sites that actually sell quality bike accessories) I am reserving this page to free, non commercial resources.

Additional Illinois Bike Map Resources:

I have found this page to be a great resource for Illinois Bike Maps: www.bikelib.org/mapstrails/index.htm