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The Loneliest Town in New Mexico: Aragon, 86 Miles From the Nearest City

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #16 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Aragon, NM — population 135, Catron County — is the most isolated inhabited place in New Mexico. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Whiteriver, AZ, sitting 86 straight-line miles away — across the state line in AZ. New Mexico has 263 towns under 10,000 residents; Aragon is the most isolated among them.

Map: Aragon, NM (New Mexico'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, Whiteriver, sits on its edge 86 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Aragon, the most isolated inhabited place in New Mexico. 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. Show Low, AZ87 MIGrants, NM88 MISilver City, NM89 MISafford, AZ101 MIWhiteriver, AZAragonNEW MEXICO 86 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Aragon (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Whiteriver, AZ (green dot), separated by 86 straight-line miles.
86 mi
straight-line distance from Aragon to Whiteriver, AZ
135
year-round residents of Aragon (Census 2020)
30 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across New Mexico's 263 small towns
#16
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Aragon → /tools/map-radius-tool · Aragon, NM · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Aragon. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 86 miles in the direction of Whiteriver.

Why this happened

New Mexico's loneliest inhabited place is Aragon — 86 miles from Whiteriver in AZ. Aragon's 135 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 New Mexico small-town resident lives 30 miles from a qualifying anchor.

New Mexico's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Aragon13586 miWhiteriver, AZ
2Datil1,03078 miGrants, NM
3Monticello20678 miLas Cruces, NM
4Reserve81877 miWhiteriver, AZ
5Carrizozo1,19772 miAlamogordo, NM

How New Mexico compares

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

#15 Maine
Saint Francis · 86 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#17 Wyoming
Lance Creek · 84 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#18 North Dakota
Neche · 74 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#14 Washington
Loomis · 93 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#13 California
Fort Bidwell · 93 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Aragon →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Aragon, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Whiteriver, AZ) sits 86 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 Mexico 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 Mexico's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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