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Bethany Beach Is Delaware's Most Remote Town. Even That's Just 9 Miles to Selbyville.

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

Bethany Beach, DE — population 3,014, Sussex County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Delaware. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Selbyville, DE, sitting 9 straight-line miles away. Delaware has 27 towns under 10,000 residents; Bethany Beach is the most isolated among them.

Map: Bethany Beach, DE (Delaware'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, Selbyville, sits on its edge 9 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Bethany Beach, the most isolated inhabited place in Delaware. 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. Rehoboth Beach, DE9 MIMillsboro, DE12 MILewes, DE13 MIOcean City, MD13 MISelbyville, DEBethany BeachDELAWARE 9 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Bethany Beach (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Selbyville, DE (green dot), separated by 9 straight-line miles.
9 mi
straight-line distance from Bethany Beach to Selbyville, DE
3,014
year-round residents of Bethany Beach (Census 2020)
5 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Delaware's 27 small towns
#50
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Bethany Beach → /tools/map-radius-tool · Bethany Beach, DE · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Bethany Beach. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 9 miles in the direction of Selbyville.

Why this happened

In a state as dense as Delaware, "loneliest town" is a relative title. Bethany Beach holds it at just 9 miles from Selbyville — a comfortable half-hour drive in most of the country, but the longest drive between any Delaware town and a qualifying city. Bethany Beach's 3,014 residents are the closest thing the state has to small-town America.

Delaware's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Bethany Beach3,0149 miSelbyville, DE
2Clayton9,5618 miSmyrna, DE
3Kenton3528 miSmyrna, DE
4Ellendale3,4358 miMilton, DE
5Ocean View8,5247 miSelbyville, DE

How Delaware compares

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

#49 New Jersey
Fortescue · 12 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#48 Rhode Island
Block Island · 17 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#47 Connecticut
Lakeville · 18 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#46 Massachusetts
Provincetown · 23 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#45 Maryland
Tylerton · 24 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Bethany Beach →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Bethany Beach, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Selbyville, DE) sits 9 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 Delaware 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 Delaware's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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