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Kanorado, KS Is Kansas's Loneliest Inhabited Place: 109 Miles to Fort Morgan in CO

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #8 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Kanorado, KS — population 258, Sherman County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Kansas. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Fort Morgan, CO, sitting 109 straight-line miles away — across the state line in CO. Kansas has 552 towns under 10,000 residents; Kanorado is the most isolated among them.

Map: Kanorado, KS (Kansas'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, Fort Morgan, sits on its edge 109 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Kanorado, the most isolated inhabited place in Kansas. 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. Sterling, CO110 MIGarden City, KS115 MIPeyton, CO137 MIElizabeth, CO137 MIFort Morgan, COKanoradoKANSAS 109 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Kanorado (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Fort Morgan, CO (green dot), separated by 109 straight-line miles.
109 mi
straight-line distance from Kanorado to Fort Morgan, CO
258
year-round residents of Kanorado (Census 2020)
29 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Kansas's 552 small towns
#8
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Kanorado → /tools/map-radius-tool · Kanorado, KS · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Kanorado. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 109 miles in the direction of Fort Morgan.

Why this happened

Kanorado, KS is the most isolated inhabited place in Kansas: 109 miles to the nearest 10,000+ city (Fort Morgan in CO). The town's 258 year-round residents live further from a qualifying city than the residents of any other Kansas town. The average Kansas small-town resident lives 29 miles from a qualifying anchor — Kanorado is the geographic outlier.

Kansas's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Kanorado258109 miFort Morgan, CO
2Goodland5,424106 miGarden City, KS
3Bird City942103 miNorth Platte, NE
4Brewster69199 miGarden City, KS
5Edson8199 miGarden City, KS

How Kansas compares

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

#9 Colorado
Cheyenne Wells · 106 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#7 South Dakota
Tuthill · 111 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#10 Minnesota
Grand Marais · 99 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#6 Texas
Presidio · 119 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#11 Idaho
Cascade · 96 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Kanorado →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Kanorado, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Fort Morgan, CO) sits 109 miles away.

More about Kansas

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

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