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Illinois's Most Remote Town Is Milford — Just 33 Miles From Rantoul

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #38 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Milford, IL — population 2,075, Iroquois County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Illinois. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Rantoul, IL, sitting 33 straight-line miles away. Illinois has 973 towns under 10,000 residents; Milford is the most isolated among them.

Map: Milford, IL (Illinois'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, Rantoul, sits on its edge 33 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Milford, the most isolated inhabited place in Illinois. 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. Danville, IL34 MIKankakee, IL35 MIWest Lafayette, IN38 MIRensselaer, IN39 MIRantoul, ILMilfordILLINOIS 33 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Milford (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Rantoul, IL (green dot), separated by 33 straight-line miles.
33 mi
straight-line distance from Milford to Rantoul, IL
2,075
year-round residents of Milford (Census 2020)
13 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Illinois's 973 small towns
#38
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Milford → /tools/map-radius-tool · Milford, IL · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Milford. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 33 miles in the direction of Rantoul.

Why this happened

Milford, IL is Illinois's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 33 miles from Rantoul. Illinois is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 13 miles from a qualifying anchor. Milford's isolation is real to its 2,075 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Illinois's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Milford2,07533 miRantoul, IL
2Stockland5133 miWest Lafayette, IN
3Mount Sterling5,06633 miQuincy, IL
4Pleasant Hill1,45033 miTroy, MO
5New Salem13432 miHannibal, MO

How Illinois compares

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

#37 Georgia
Bluffton · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#39 Pennsylvania
Coudersport · 31 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#36 Mississippi
Scooba · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#40 Tennessee
Linden · 31 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#35 Arkansas
De Witt · 41 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Milford →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Milford, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Rantoul, IL) sits 33 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 Illinois 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 Illinois's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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