Even in Hawaii, There Is a Loneliest Town: Naalehu, 49 Miles From a City
Naalehu, HI — population 2,470, Hawaii County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Hawaii. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Kailua Kona, HI, sitting 49 straight-line miles away. Hawaii has 55 towns under 10,000 residents; Naalehu is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Naalehu. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 49 miles in the direction of Kailua Kona.
Why this happened
Naalehu, HI is Hawaii's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 49 miles from Kailua Kona. Hawaii is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 15 miles from a qualifying anchor. Naalehu's isolation is real to its 2,470 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.
Hawaii's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Hawaii, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Naalehu | 2,470 | 49 mi | Kailua Kona, HI |
| 2 | Ocean View | 4,380 | 45 mi | Kailua Kona, HI |
| 3 | Hoolehua | 1,670 | 37 mi | Lahaina, HI |
| 4 | Maunaloa | 501 | 36 mi | Waimanalo, HI |
| 5 | Pahala | 1,822 | 35 mi | Hilo, HI |
How Hawaii compares
The states ranked closest to Hawaii on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Naalehu →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Naalehu, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Kailua Kona, HI) sits 49 miles away.
More about Hawaii
See the full breakdown of Hawaii's counties at /states/hawaii/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around Hawaii's capital measures the share of Hawaii'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 Hawaii 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 Hawaii's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Hawaii. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/hawaii. CC-BY 4.0.