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Michigan's Most Isolated Town Is McMillan — 70 Miles to a City of 10,000

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #20 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

McMillan, MI — population 1,335, Luce County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Michigan. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Sault Sainte Marie, MI, sitting 70 straight-line miles away. Michigan has 622 towns under 10,000 residents; McMillan is the most isolated among them.

Map: McMillan, MI (Michigan'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, Sault Sainte Marie, sits on its edge 70 miles away.The brick-red dot marks McMillan, the most isolated inhabited place in Michigan. 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. Gladstone, MI73 MIEscanaba, MI80 MIPetoskey, MI82 MICheboygan, MI83 MISault Sainte Marie, MIMcMillanMICHIGAN 70 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
McMillan (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Sault Sainte Marie, MI (green dot), separated by 70 straight-line miles.
70 mi
straight-line distance from McMillan to Sault Sainte Marie, MI
1,335
year-round residents of McMillan (Census 2020)
16 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Michigan's 622 small towns
#20
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around McMillan → /tools/map-radius-tool · McMillan, MI · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around McMillan. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 70 miles in the direction of Sault Sainte Marie.

Why this happened

Michigan's loneliest inhabited place is McMillan — 70 miles from Sault Sainte Marie. McMillan's 1,335 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 Michigan small-town resident lives 16 miles from a qualifying anchor.

Michigan's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1McMillan1,33570 miSault Sainte Marie, MI
2Curtis19169 miSault Sainte Marie, MI
3Gould City42665 miPetoskey, MI
4Grand Marais19864 miMarquette, MI
5Seney23464 miGladstone, MI

How Michigan compares

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

#21 Arizona
Blue Gap · 66 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#19 Vermont
Beecher Falls · 72 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#22 New Hampshire
Pittsburg · 65 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#18 North Dakota
Neche · 74 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#23 Louisiana
Venice · 63 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around McMillan →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for McMillan, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Sault Sainte Marie, MI) sits 70 miles away.

More about Michigan

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

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