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.
More about Minnesota
See the full breakdown of Minnesota's counties at /states/minnesota/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around Minnesota's capital measures the share of Minnesota'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 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.