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Blythedale, MO Is Missouri's Most Remote Inhabited Place — 52 Miles to Chillicothe

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #27 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Blythedale, MO — population 530, Harrison County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Missouri. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Chillicothe, MO, sitting 52 straight-line miles away. Missouri has 762 towns under 10,000 residents; Blythedale is the most isolated among them.

Map: Blythedale, MO (Missouri'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, Chillicothe, sits on its edge 52 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Blythedale, the most isolated inhabited place in Missouri. 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. Maryville, MO55 MICameron, MO57 MIIndianola, IA58 MINorwalk, IA66 MIChillicothe, MOBlythedaleMISSOURI 52 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Blythedale (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Chillicothe, MO (green dot), separated by 52 straight-line miles.
52 mi
straight-line distance from Blythedale to Chillicothe, MO
530
year-round residents of Blythedale (Census 2020)
16 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Missouri's 762 small towns
#27
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Blythedale → /tools/map-radius-tool · Blythedale, MO · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Blythedale. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 52 miles in the direction of Chillicothe.

Why this happened

Missouri's loneliest inhabited place is Blythedale — 52 miles from Chillicothe. Blythedale's 530 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 Missouri small-town resident lives 16 miles from a qualifying anchor.

Missouri's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Blythedale53052 miChillicothe, MO
2Mercer75750 miChillicothe, MO
3Eagleville95147 miMaryville, MO
4Cainsville37147 miChillicothe, MO
5Powersville18544 miKirksville, MO

How Missouri compares

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

#26 Alabama
Thomasville · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#28 New York
Blue Mountain Lake · 51 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#29 Hawaii
Naalehu · 49 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#25 Iowa
Massena · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#24 North Carolina
Hatteras · 56 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Blythedale →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Blythedale, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Chillicothe, MO) sits 52 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 Missouri 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 Missouri's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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