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Iowa's Most Isolated Town Is Massena — 53 Miles to a City of 10,000

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #25 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Massena, IA — population 716, Cass County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Iowa. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Waukee, IA, sitting 53 straight-line miles away. Iowa has 857 towns under 10,000 residents; Massena is the most isolated among them.

Map: Massena, IA (Iowa'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, Waukee, sits on its edge 53 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Massena, the most isolated inhabited place in Iowa. 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. Council Bluffs, IA55 MIWest Des Moines, IA56 MIClive, IA57 MICarroll, IA57 MIWaukee, IAMassenaIOWA 53 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Massena (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Waukee, IA (green dot), separated by 53 straight-line miles.
53 mi
straight-line distance from Massena to Waukee, IA
716
year-round residents of Massena (Census 2020)
20 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Iowa's 857 small towns
#25
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Massena → /tools/map-radius-tool · Massena, IA · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Massena. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 53 miles in the direction of Waukee.

Why this happened

Iowa's loneliest inhabited place is Massena — 53 miles from Waukee. Massena's 716 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 Iowa small-town resident lives 20 miles from a qualifying anchor.

Iowa's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Massena71653 miWaukee, IA
2Prescott67652 miMaryville, MO
3Davis City51751 miIndianola, IA
4Lamoni2,84251 miMaryville, MO
5Kellerton52850 miMaryville, MO

How Iowa compares

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

#26 Alabama
Thomasville · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#24 North Carolina
Hatteras · 56 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#23 Louisiana
Venice · 63 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#27 Missouri
Blythedale · 52 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#22 New Hampshire
Pittsburg · 65 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Massena →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Massena, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Waukee, IA) sits 53 miles away.

More about Iowa

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

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