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63 Miles to the Nearest City: Venice Is Louisiana's Loneliest Town

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #23 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Venice, LA — population 337, Plaquemines County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Louisiana. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Belle Chasse, LA, sitting 63 straight-line miles away. Louisiana has 349 towns under 10,000 residents; Venice is the most isolated among them.

Map: Venice, LA (Louisiana'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, Belle Chasse, sits on its edge 63 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Venice, the most isolated inhabited place in Louisiana. 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. Gretna, LA69 MIHarvey, LA69 MIChalmette, LA70 MIMarrero, LA70 MIBelle Chasse, LAVeniceLOUISIANA 63 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Venice (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Belle Chasse, LA (green dot), separated by 63 straight-line miles.
63 mi
straight-line distance from Venice to Belle Chasse, LA
337
year-round residents of Venice (Census 2020)
16 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Louisiana's 349 small towns
#23
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Venice → /tools/map-radius-tool · Venice, LA · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Venice. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 63 miles in the direction of Belle Chasse.

Why this happened

Louisiana's loneliest inhabited place is Venice — 63 miles from Belle Chasse. Venice's 337 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 Louisiana small-town resident lives 16 miles from a qualifying anchor.

Louisiana's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Venice33763 miBelle Chasse, LA
2Boothville12549 miBelle Chasse, LA
3Buras1,74745 miBelle Chasse, LA
4Grand Isle62340 miBelle Chasse, LA
5Lake Providence6,39739 miBastrop, LA

How Louisiana compares

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

#22 New Hampshire
Pittsburg · 65 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#24 North Carolina
Hatteras · 56 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#21 Arizona
Blue Gap · 66 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#25 Iowa
Massena · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#26 Alabama
Thomasville · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Venice →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Venice, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Belle Chasse, LA) sits 63 miles away.

More about Louisiana

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

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