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93 Miles to the Nearest City: Fort Bidwell Is California's Loneliest Town

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #13 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Fort Bidwell, CA — population 193, Modoc County — is the most isolated inhabited place in California. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Susanville, CA, sitting 93 straight-line miles away. California has 645 towns under 10,000 residents; Fort Bidwell is the most isolated among them.

Map: Fort Bidwell, CA (California'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, Susanville, sits on its edge 93 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Fort Bidwell, the most isolated inhabited place in California. 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. Klamath Falls, OR94 MIWinnemucca, NV120 MIAshland, OR127 MIEagle Point, OR139 MISusanville, CAFort BidwellCALIFORNIA 93 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Fort Bidwell (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Susanville, CA (green dot), separated by 93 straight-line miles.
93 mi
straight-line distance from Fort Bidwell to Susanville, CA
193
year-round residents of Fort Bidwell (Census 2020)
16 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across California's 645 small towns
#13
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Fort Bidwell → /tools/map-radius-tool · Fort Bidwell, CA · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Fort Bidwell. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 93 miles in the direction of Susanville.

Why this happened

California's loneliest inhabited place is Fort Bidwell — 93 miles from Susanville. Fort Bidwell's 193 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 California small-town resident lives 16 miles from a qualifying anchor.

California's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Fort Bidwell19393 miSusanville, CA
2Lake City12584 miSusanville, CA
3Davis Creek11080 miKlamath Falls, OR
4Cedarville71370 miSusanville, CA
5Canby43767 miSusanville, CA

How California compares

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

#12 Utah
Teasdale · 96 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#14 Washington
Loomis · 93 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#11 Idaho
Cascade · 96 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#15 Maine
Saint Francis · 86 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#10 Minnesota
Grand Marais · 99 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Fort Bidwell →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Fort Bidwell, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Susanville, CA) sits 93 miles away.

More about California

See the full breakdown of California's counties at /states/california/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around California's capital measures the share of California'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 California 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 California's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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