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Massachusetts Is So Dense That Its "Loneliest" Town — Provincetown — Is Just 23 Miles From a City

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #46 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Provincetown, MA — population 3,703, Barnstable County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Massachusetts. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Brewster, MA, sitting 23 straight-line miles away. Massachusetts has 250 towns under 10,000 residents; Provincetown is the most isolated among them.

Map: Provincetown, MA (Massachusetts'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, Brewster, sits on its edge 23 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Provincetown, the most isolated inhabited place in Massachusetts. 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. Plymouth, MA26 MIHarwich, MA26 MIDuxbury, MA27 MIMarshfield, MA27 MIBrewster, MAProvincetownMASSACHUSETTS 23 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Provincetown (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Brewster, MA (green dot), separated by 23 straight-line miles.
23 mi
straight-line distance from Provincetown to Brewster, MA
3,703
year-round residents of Provincetown (Census 2020)
6 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Massachusetts's 250 small towns
#46
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Provincetown → /tools/map-radius-tool · Provincetown, MA · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Provincetown. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 23 miles in the direction of Brewster.

Why this happened

In a state as dense as Massachusetts, "loneliest town" is a relative title. Provincetown holds it at just 23 miles from Brewster — a comfortable half-hour drive in most of the country, but the longest drive between any Massachusetts town and a qualifying city. Provincetown's 3,703 residents are the closest thing the state has to small-town America.

Massachusetts's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Provincetown3,70323 miBrewster, MA
2North Truro84521 miBrewster, MA
3Great Barrington8,82619 miPittsfield, MA
4Chilmark2,24419 miSouth Dartmouth, MA
5Monterey69219 miPittsfield, MA

How Massachusetts compares

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

#47 Connecticut
Lakeville · 18 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#45 Maryland
Tylerton · 24 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#44 Ohio
Lewisville · 25 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#48 Rhode Island
Block Island · 17 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#49 New Jersey
Fortescue · 12 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Provincetown →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Provincetown, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Brewster, MA) sits 23 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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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