The Loneliest Towns in America: The Most Isolated Inhabited Place in Every US State
By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Data: 21,376 candidate towns · 5,488 anchor cities·CC-BY 4.0
We measured every inhabited place in the United States against every city of 10,000+ residents. The single most isolated town in the lower 48 is Opheim, MT — population 242, sitting 138 straight-line miles from the nearest 10,000-resident city (Williston, ND). Include Alaska and the answer changes dramatically: Adak, AK is 1001 miles from anywhere of comparable size — no road connects them.
138 mi
distance from Opheim, MT (loneliest lower-48 town) to the nearest city of 10,000+
1001 mi
distance from Adak, AK (loneliest all-50 town) to its nearest anchor
242
year-round residents of Opheim, MT — the lower-48 winner
21,376
US towns measured (population 50–9,999); every state has a loneliest town
How to read this study. We aggregate the US Census ZCTA dataset by postal city. A town is any (postal city, state) pair with at least 50 residents. An anchor city is any place with at least 10,000 residents. For every town below the anchor threshold, we compute the straight-line distance to the nearest anchor and rank descending. The lower-48 ranking excludes Alaska and Hawaii so the headline is a town reachable by road; the all-50 ranking includes them. Full methodology below.
The 25 loneliest towns in the lower 48
Montana dominates: four of the top five most-isolated places in the contiguous US sit along its northern Hi-Line corridor. The Mountain West (Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming) supplies most of the rest. Click any state for its dedicated page.
The 10 loneliest towns in all 50 states (including Alaska)
Alaska geography is so distinct — vast roadless wilderness, hundreds of small native villages on remote islands and coasts — that mixing it into the lower-48 ranking would distort the picture. Here it dominates.
Rank
Town
State
Pop.
Distance to nearest 10K+
Nearest city
1
Adak
AK
73
1001 mi
Kodiak, AK
2
Gambell
AK
569
697 mi
Kenai, AK
3
Savoonga
AK
868
660 mi
Kenai, AK
4
Saint Paul Island
AK
378
628 mi
Kodiak, AK
5
Saint George Island
AK
70
612 mi
Kodiak, AK
6
Dutch Harbor
AK
809
571 mi
Kodiak, AK
7
Unalaska
AK
3,747
568 mi
Kodiak, AK
8
Wales
AK
238
563 mi
Fairbanks, AK
9
Akutan
AK
694
537 mi
Kodiak, AK
10
Brevig Mission
AK
718
521 mi
Fairbanks, AK
Every state's loneliest town
Each state has its own dedicated page with that state's most-remote town, top-5 most-isolated, a focused map, and a one-click link to the Map Radius Tool centred on the lonely town.
Place definition. We aggregate the US Census ZCTA dataset (~41,000 records, integrating Census 2020 ACS via the SimpleMaps uszips dataset) by postal city + state. A town is any (postal city, state) pair whose summed ZCTA population is at least 50. Postal-city aggregation catches both incorporated places and Census Designated Places, with the postal city name as the user-facing label that journalists and residents actually use.
Anchor city threshold. A place qualifies as an anchor if its aggregate population is at least 10,000 residents — the standard small-city threshold used in retail trade-area analysis, USDA rural-health classifications, and academic isolation studies. Below 10,000 a place typically lacks a full-service supermarket, an inpatient hospital, and a high school district sized to retain certified teachers. After the aggregation step we identify 5,488 anchor cities and 21,376 candidate towns.
Distance computation.For every candidate town, we compute the haversine (great-circle) distance to every anchor city, then keep the minimum. The brute-force loop runs ~117 million haversine calls in about two and a half minutes; we don't use a spatial index because the constant-factor wins aren't worth the code complexity at this scale.
Two rankings, one study.The lower-48 ranking excludes Alaska and Hawaii because their geography (Aleutian islands, no statewide road network) is structurally different from the contiguous states; mixing them would produce a national headline that says the loneliest town is an Aleutian island — true but not the press-pitchable story for a US-mainland audience. The all-50 ranking keeps them in, and it's where Alaska's bush villages legitimately dominate.
Limitations and caveats
Straight-line, not driving.Real-world drives are typically 1.2–1.5× the haversine figure in rural America, longer in mountainous areas. Use SimpleMapLab's Drive Time Map for the drive-time check around any specific town.
50-resident floor. We exclude places with fewer than 50 residents to weed out fire-watch posts, mining camps, and single-household ZCTAs. A few legitimate towns under 50 — usually historic mining or ranching settlements with year-round inhabitants — are excluded as a result.
Census 2020 baseline. Population data is anchored to Census 2020 (with ACS smoothing for recent years). Towns that have grown or shrunk significantly since 2020 may be at the wrong rank; the differences are typically less than one tier.
Postal city aggregation.Some Census incorporated places share postal city names with neighbouring unincorporated areas, which can inflate or deflate population. We've chosen postal-city aggregation because it matches how Americans actually refer to where they live; the trade-off is occasionally surprising aggregations.
Frequently asked questions
Opheim, MT. With 242 year-round residents (Census 2020) and 138 straight-line miles to the nearest city of 10,000+ (Williston, ND), Opheim edges out four other Montana Hi-Line towns at the top of the lower-48 ranking.
Adak, AK. Adak sits 1001 miles from the nearest 10,000+ city (Kodiak, AK). The drive is not possible — the islands are not connected by road. The all-50 ranking is dominated by Alaska bush villages on the Aleutian and Pribilof islands.
10,000 residents is the standard small-city threshold used in retail trade-area analysis, USDA Rural Health classifications, and academic studies of isolation. Below 10,000 a place typically lacks a full-service supermarket, a hospital with overnight inpatient capacity, and a public school district sized to retain teachers. The threshold is a proxy for the nearest place that can support a town's life needs.
We aggregate the US Census ZCTA (ZIP Code Tabulation Area) dataset by postal city name + state. A town is any (postal city, state) pair with a Census 2020 resident population of at least 50. This catches both incorporated places (cities, villages) and Census Designated Places (unincorporated communities). The 50-resident floor excludes seasonal mining camps, fire posts, and individual-household ZCTAs.
Straight-line (haversine) distance on the WGS84 spheroid. Actual driving distance is typically 1.2–1.5× the straight-line figure in rural America, longer in mountainous areas. For a real drive-time check, use the Drive Time Map.
Alaska dominates the all-50 ranking — the top 10 most-isolated places nationally are all Alaska bush villages on Aleutian or Pribilof islands. But Alaska geography (remote islands, no road network across most of the state) is so different from the lower 48 that mixing them produces a misleading national headline. The lower-48 ranking surfaces the place that is most isolated within the road-connected United States.
Yes, to the best of our data. Census 2020 ZCTA populations measure usual residents (where people normally sleep), not seasonal occupants. We exclude places with population under 50 to weed out fire-watch posts, mining camps, and single-household ZCTAs. For very-small-population entries (under 200 residents) we recommend cross-referencing with Wikipedia to confirm the place has a school, post office, or other year-round community marker.
21,376 candidate towns (population 50-9,999) measured against 5,488 anchor cities (population ≥ 10,000) across the 50 states + DC. Postal-city aggregation produces a higher anchor count than Census-incorporated-places-only methods because suburbs with their own postal city names count separately.
Yes — JSON and CSV are linked under Download the dataset below. The CSV has one row per state with the most-remote town and its top-5; the JSON has the full 100-entry lower-48 ranking, the all-50 ranking, and per-state breakdowns. CC-BY 4.0; attribution to SimpleMapLab required.
For each candidate town, we compute the haversine distance to every anchor city, then keep the minimum. 21,376 candidates × 5,488 anchors = ~117 million haversine calls; the full pipeline runs in about 2.5 minutes on a modern laptop. No third-party API; all computation is local and reproducible.
Slowly. Most of these towns lose population over time (the Hi-Line, the Great Plains, and Aleutian villages have all been depopulating since the 1950s); a few grow enough to cross or fall below thresholds. We will refresh the analysis when Census ACS 5-year estimates update materially or after the next decennial (2030).
Download the dataset
The full dataset — 100-entry lower-48 + 100-entry all-50 + top-5-per-state + methodology parameters — is downloadable as JSON or CSV under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 licence. Attribution required: SimpleMapLab (2026).
For press inquiries, high-resolution map renders, or to suggest a data correction (especially for very-small-population entries): hello@simplemaplab.com. We respond to confirmed press requests within one business day.
Suggested citation
SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: The Most Isolated Inhabited Place in Every US State. Full per-state ranking with downloadable dataset under CC-BY 4.0. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places.