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51 Miles to the Nearest City: Blue Mountain Lake Is New York's Loneliest Town

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #28 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

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.

Map: Blue Mountain Lake, NY (New York'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, Gloversville, sits on its edge 51 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Blue Mountain Lake, the most isolated inhabited place in New York. 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. Queensbury, NY51 MIGlens Falls, NY54 MIHudson Falls, NY56 MIJohnstown, NY57 MIGloversville, NYBlue Mountain LakeNEW YORK 51 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Blue Mountain Lake (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Gloversville, NY (green dot), separated by 51 straight-line miles.
51 mi
straight-line distance from Blue Mountain Lake to Gloversville, NY
265
year-round residents of Blue Mountain Lake (Census 2020)
12 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across New York's 1,159 small towns
#28
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Blue Mountain Lake → /tools/map-radius-tool · Blue Mountain Lake, NY · 50 mi
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.

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Blue Mountain Lake26551 miGloversville, NY
2Long Lake74049 miPotsdam, NY
3Newcomb49048 miMiddlebury, VT
4Raquette Lake13548 miCarthage, NY
5Inlet22746 miGloversville, NY

How New York compares

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

#29 Hawaii
Naalehu · 49 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#27 Missouri
Blythedale · 52 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#26 Alabama
Thomasville · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#30 Wisconsin
Park Falls · 49 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#31 Florida
Apalachicola · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

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.

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.