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The Loneliest Town in Arizona: Blue Gap, 66 Miles From the Nearest City

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #21 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Blue Gap, AZ — population 2,293, Apache County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Arizona. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Tuba City, AZ, sitting 66 straight-line miles away. Arizona has 176 towns under 10,000 residents; Blue Gap is the most isolated among them.

Map: Blue Gap, AZ (Arizona's loneliest inhabited place) and its 5 nearest cities of 10,000+ residents. The brick-red ring shows the empty zone in which no qualifying city exists; the nearest, Tuba City, sits on its edge 66 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Blue Gap, the most isolated inhabited place in Arizona. Up to 5 green dots mark the nearest qualifying cities (population 10,000+), each labelled with name and straight-line distance. The brick-red dashed circle traces the empty zone — radius equal to the distance to the very nearest qualifying city. Winslow, AZ72 MIGallup, NM77 MIShiprock, NM77 MIPage, AZ90 MITuba City, AZBlue GapARIZONA 66 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Blue Gap (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Tuba City, AZ (green dot), separated by 66 straight-line miles.
66 mi
straight-line distance from Blue Gap to Tuba City, AZ
2,293
year-round residents of Blue Gap (Census 2020)
26 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Arizona's 176 small towns
#21
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Blue Gap → /tools/map-radius-tool · Blue Gap, AZ · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Blue Gap. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 66 miles in the direction of Tuba City.

Why this happened

Arizona's loneliest inhabited place is Blue Gap — 66 miles from Tuba City. Blue Gap's 2,293 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 Arizona small-town resident lives 26 miles from a qualifying anchor.

Arizona's 5 most isolated towns

The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Arizona, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Blue Gap2,29366 miTuba City, AZ
2Kayenta7,39261 miTuba City, AZ
3Grand Canyon1,97060 miPage, AZ
4Chinle9,91159 miShiprock, NM
5Ajo3,55559 miMaricopa, AZ

How Arizona compares

The states ranked closest to Arizona on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.

#20 Michigan
McMillan · 70 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#22 New Hampshire
Pittsburg · 65 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#23 Louisiana
Venice · 63 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#19 Vermont
Beecher Falls · 72 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#24 North Carolina
Hatteras · 56 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Blue Gap →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Blue Gap, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Tuba City, AZ) sits 66 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 Arizona 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 Arizona's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Arizona. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/arizona. CC-BY 4.0.