simplemaplab

Maine's Most Isolated Town Is Saint Francis — 86 Miles to a City of 10,000

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #15 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Saint Francis, ME — population 624, Aroostook County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Maine. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Houlton, ME, sitting 86 straight-line miles away. Maine has 376 towns under 10,000 residents; Saint Francis is the most isolated among them.

Map: Saint Francis, ME (Maine'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, Houlton, sits on its edge 86 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Saint Francis, the most isolated inhabited place in Maine. 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. Orono, ME154 MIBangor, ME156 MISkowhegan, ME162 MIEllsworth, ME172 MIHoulton, MESaint FrancisMAINE 86 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Saint Francis (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Houlton, ME (green dot), separated by 86 straight-line miles.
86 mi
straight-line distance from Saint Francis to Houlton, ME
624
year-round residents of Saint Francis (Census 2020)
24 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Maine's 376 small towns
#15
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Saint Francis → /tools/map-radius-tool · Saint Francis, ME · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Saint Francis. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 86 miles in the direction of Houlton.

Why this happened

Maine's loneliest inhabited place is Saint Francis — 86 miles from Houlton. Saint Francis's 624 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 Maine small-town resident lives 24 miles from a qualifying anchor.

Maine's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Saint Francis62486 miHoulton, ME
2Madawaska3,34185 miHoulton, ME
3Frenchville97183 miHoulton, ME
4Fort Kent4,77081 miHoulton, ME
5Saint David55081 miHoulton, ME

How Maine compares

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

#16 New Mexico
Aragon · 86 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#14 Washington
Loomis · 93 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#13 California
Fort Bidwell · 93 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#17 Wyoming
Lance Creek · 84 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#18 North Dakota
Neche · 74 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Saint Francis →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Saint Francis, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Houlton, ME) sits 86 miles away.

More about Maine

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

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