The Loneliest Town in Alabama: Thomasville, 53 Miles From the Nearest City
Thomasville, AL — population 5,835, Clarke County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Alabama. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Waynesboro, MS, sitting 53 straight-line miles away — across the state line in MS. Alabama has 406 towns under 10,000 residents; Thomasville is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Thomasville. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 53 miles in the direction of Waynesboro.
Why this happened
Alabama's loneliest inhabited place is Thomasville — 53 miles from Waynesboro in MS. Thomasville's 5,835 residents are the most-removed-from-civilization population in the state, though the gap is not as dramatic as in the Mountain West or Great Plains states. The average Alabama small-town resident lives 17 miles from a qualifying anchor.
Alabama's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Alabama, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thomasville | 5,835 | 53 mi | Waynesboro, MS |
| 2 | Dixons Mills | 1,559 | 52 mi | Selma, AL |
| 3 | Sweet Water | 1,850 | 49 mi | Meridian, MS |
| 4 | Coy | 581 | 49 mi | Selma, AL |
| 5 | Linden | 2,522 | 47 mi | Selma, AL |
How Alabama compares
The states ranked closest to Alabama on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Thomasville →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Thomasville, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Waynesboro, MS) sits 53 miles away.
More about Alabama
See the full breakdown of Alabama's counties at /states/alabama/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around Alabama's capital measures the share of Alabama's population that lives within day-trip distance of the capitol — an inverse framing of the isolation question this page poses.
Methodology (brief)
We aggregate the US Census ZCTA dataset by postal city, treating any (postal city, state) pair with ≥ 50 residents as a town. Anchor cities are places with ≥ 10,000 residents. For every Alabama town below the anchor threshold, we compute the straight-line distance to every anchor city in the US (cross-state distances count). The town with the largest minimum distance is Alabama's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Alabama. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/alabama. CC-BY 4.0.