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Even in Kentucky, There Is a Loneliest Town: Baxter, 29 Miles From a City

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #41 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Baxter, KY — population 1,732, Harlan County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Kentucky. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Hazard, KY, sitting 29 straight-line miles away. Kentucky has 598 towns under 10,000 residents; Baxter is the most isolated among them.

Map: Baxter, KY (Kentucky'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, Hazard, sits on its edge 29 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Baxter, the most isolated inhabited place in Kentucky. 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. Tazewell, TN30 MIBig Stone Gap, VA30 MIMiddlesboro, KY31 MIManchester, KY31 MIHazard, KYBaxterKENTUCKY 29 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Baxter (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Hazard, KY (green dot), separated by 29 straight-line miles.
29 mi
straight-line distance from Baxter to Hazard, KY
1,732
year-round residents of Baxter (Census 2020)
13 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Kentucky's 598 small towns
#41
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Baxter → /tools/map-radius-tool · Baxter, KY · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Baxter. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 29 miles in the direction of Hazard.

Why this happened

Baxter, KY is Kentucky's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 29 miles from Hazard. Kentucky is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 13 miles from a qualifying anchor. Baxter's isolation is real to its 1,732 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Kentucky's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Baxter1,73229 miHazard, KY
2Coalgood14827 miTazewell, TN
3Putney42626 miHazard, KY
4Sturgis3,90326 miMount Vernon, IN
5Bledsoe1,32326 miHazard, KY

How Kentucky compares

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

#42 Indiana
Dugger · 27 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#40 Tennessee
Linden · 31 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#39 Pennsylvania
Coudersport · 31 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#43 South Carolina
Hampton · 25 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#38 Illinois
Milford · 33 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Baxter →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Baxter, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Hazard, KY) sits 29 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 Kentucky 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 Kentucky's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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