Minnesota's Most Isolated Town Is Grand Marais — 99 Miles to a City of 10,000
Grand Marais, MN — population 3,719, Cook County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Minnesota. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Ashland, WI, sitting 99 straight-line miles away — across the state line in WI. Minnesota has 679 towns under 10,000 residents; Grand Marais is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Grand Marais. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 99 miles in the direction of Ashland.
Why this happened
Minnesota's loneliest inhabited place is Grand Marais — 99 miles from Ashland in WI. Grand Marais's 3,719 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 Minnesota small-town resident lives 23 miles from a qualifying anchor.
Minnesota's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Minnesota, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grand Marais | 3,719 | 99 mi | Ashland, WI |
| 2 | Ranier | 217 | 89 mi | Hibbing, MN |
| 3 | Hovland | 198 | 88 mi | Houghton, MI |
| 4 | Angle Inlet | 85 | 88 mi | Thief River Falls, MN |
| 5 | Lutsen | 535 | 85 mi | Ashland, WI |
How Minnesota compares
The states ranked closest to Minnesota on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Grand Marais →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Grand Marais, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Ashland, WI) sits 99 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 Minnesota 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 Minnesota's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Minnesota. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/minnesota. CC-BY 4.0.