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In a Crowded State, De Witt Is the Loneliest Place: Arkansas's Most Remote Town

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #35 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

De Witt, AR — population 4,993, Arkansas County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Arkansas. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Clarksdale, MS, sitting 41 straight-line miles away — across the state line in MS. Arkansas has 470 towns under 10,000 residents; De Witt is the most isolated among them.

Map: De Witt, AR (Arkansas'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, Clarksdale, sits on its edge 41 miles away.The brick-red dot marks De Witt, the most isolated inhabited place in Arkansas. 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. Pine Bluff, AR42 MIWhite Hall, AR47 MICleveland, MS49 MILonoke, AR50 MIClarksdale, MSDe WittARKANSAS 41 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
De Witt (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Clarksdale, MS (green dot), separated by 41 straight-line miles.
41 mi
straight-line distance from De Witt to Clarksdale, MS
4,993
year-round residents of De Witt (Census 2020)
17 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Arkansas's 470 small towns
#35
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around De Witt → /tools/map-radius-tool · De Witt, AR · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around De Witt. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 41 miles in the direction of Clarksdale.

Why this happened

De Witt, AR is Arkansas's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 41 miles from Clarksdale in MS. Arkansas is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 17 miles from a qualifying anchor. De Witt's isolation is real to its 4,993 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Arkansas's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1De Witt4,99341 miClarksdale, MS
2Crocketts Bluff7641 miClarksdale, MS
3Almyra62339 miPine Bluff, AR
4Casscoe20139 miLonoke, AR
5Leslie1,30639 miMountain Home, AR

How Arkansas compares

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

#36 Mississippi
Scooba · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#34 Virginia
Quinby · 43 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#37 Georgia
Bluffton · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#33 Oklahoma
Boise City · 45 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#38 Illinois
Milford · 33 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around De Witt →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for De Witt, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Clarksdale, MS) sits 41 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 Arkansas 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 Arkansas's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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