The Loneliest Town in Alaska Is Adak, 1001 Miles From the Nearest City of 10,000
Adak, AK — population 73, Aleutians West County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Alaska. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Kodiak, AK, sitting 1001 straight-line miles away. Alaska has 176 towns under 10,000 residents; Adak is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Adak. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 1001 miles in the direction of Kodiak.
Why this happened
Adak, Alaska is the most isolated inhabited place in the entire United States. The town sits on Adak Island in the Aleutians, 1,000+ miles southwest of Anchorage by air and accessible only by Alaska Airlines twice-weekly flights or US Coast Guard supply ship. The 2020 Census recorded 73 year-round residents — down from a peak of about 6,000 during the Cold War, when Adak was a strategically vital US Navy submarine-tracking station.
Adak's nearest city of 10,000+ is Kodiak — 1,001 miles east across the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. No road connects the two; the only way to travel between is by air. Alaska's other top-five loneliest places — Gambell, Savoonga, the St. Paul/St. George islands of the Pribilofs — are similarly stranded on remote islands or western coastal stretches accessible only by small plane.
Alaska's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Alaska, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Adak | 73 | 1001 mi | Kodiak, AK |
| 2 | Gambell | 569 | 697 mi | Kenai, AK |
| 3 | Savoonga | 868 | 660 mi | Kenai, AK |
| 4 | Saint Paul Island | 378 | 628 mi | Kodiak, AK |
| 5 | Saint George Island | 70 | 612 mi | Kodiak, AK |
How Alaska compares
The states ranked closest to Alaska on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Adak →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Adak, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Kodiak, AK) sits 1001 miles away.
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 Alaska 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 Alaska's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Alaska. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/alaska. CC-BY 4.0.