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New Jersey Is So Dense That Its "Loneliest" Town — Fortescue — Is Just 12 Miles From a City

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #49 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Fortescue, NJ — population 133, Cumberland County — is the most isolated inhabited place in New Jersey. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Millville, NJ, sitting 12 straight-line miles away. New Jersey has 268 towns under 10,000 residents; Fortescue is the most isolated among them.

Map: Fortescue, NJ (New Jersey'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, Millville, sits on its edge 12 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Fortescue, the most isolated inhabited place in New Jersey. 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. Bridgeton, NJ17 MIVillas, NJ18 MICape May Court House, NJ18 MIVineland, NJ20 MIMillville, NJFortescueNEW JERSEY 12 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Fortescue (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Millville, NJ (green dot), separated by 12 straight-line miles.
12 mi
straight-line distance from Fortescue to Millville, NJ
133
year-round residents of Fortescue (Census 2020)
4 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across New Jersey's 268 small towns
#49
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Fortescue → /tools/map-radius-tool · Fortescue, NJ · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Fortescue. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 12 miles in the direction of Millville.

Why this happened

In a state as dense as New Jersey, "loneliest town" is a relative title. Fortescue holds it at just 12 miles from Millville — a comfortable half-hour drive in most of the country, but the longest drive between any New Jersey town and a qualifying city. Fortescue's 133 residents are the closest thing the state has to small-town America.

New Jersey's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Fortescue13312 miMillville, NJ
2Heislerville21011 miMillville, NJ
3Chatsworth90710 miVincentown, NJ
4Woodbine8,36210 miCape May Court House, NJ
5Blairstown9,21010 miNewton, NJ

How New Jersey compares

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

#50 Delaware
Bethany Beach · 9 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#48 Rhode Island
Block Island · 17 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#47 Connecticut
Lakeville · 18 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#46 Massachusetts
Provincetown · 23 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#45 Maryland
Tylerton · 24 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Fortescue →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Fortescue, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Millville, NJ) sits 12 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 New Jersey 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 New Jersey's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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