51 Miles to the Nearest City: Blue Mountain Lake Is New York's Loneliest Town
Blue Mountain Lake, NY — population 265, Hamilton County — is the most isolated inhabited place in New York. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Gloversville, NY, sitting 51 straight-line miles away. New York has 1,159 towns under 10,000 residents; Blue Mountain Lake is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Blue Mountain Lake. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 51 miles in the direction of Gloversville.
Why this happened
New York's loneliest inhabited place is Blue Mountain Lake — 51 miles from Gloversville. Blue Mountain Lake's 265 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 York small-town resident lives 12 miles from a qualifying anchor.
New York's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in New York, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blue Mountain Lake | 265 | 51 mi | Gloversville, NY |
| 2 | Long Lake | 740 | 49 mi | Potsdam, NY |
| 3 | Newcomb | 490 | 48 mi | Middlebury, VT |
| 4 | Raquette Lake | 135 | 48 mi | Carthage, NY |
| 5 | Inlet | 227 | 46 mi | Gloversville, NY |
How New York compares
The states ranked closest to New York on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Blue Mountain Lake →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Blue Mountain Lake, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Gloversville, NY) sits 51 miles away.
More about New York
See the full breakdown of New York's counties at /states/new-york/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around New York's capital measures the share of New York'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 New York 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 York's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: New York. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/new-york. CC-BY 4.0.