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Mapping North Carolina's Loneliest Town: Hatteras Sits 56 Miles From Kill Devil Hills

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #24 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Hatteras, NC — population 152, Dare County — is the most isolated inhabited place in North Carolina. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Kill Devil Hills, NC, sitting 56 straight-line miles away. North Carolina has 485 towns under 10,000 residents; Hatteras is the most isolated among them.

Map: Hatteras, NC (North Carolina'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, Kill Devil Hills, sits on its edge 56 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Hatteras, the most isolated inhabited place in North Carolina. 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. Beaufort, NC58 MIMorehead City, NC68 MIHavelock, NC72 MINewport, NC74 MIKill Devil Hills, NCHatterasNORTH CAROLINA 56 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Hatteras (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Kill Devil Hills, NC (green dot), separated by 56 straight-line miles.
56 mi
straight-line distance from Hatteras to Kill Devil Hills, NC
152
year-round residents of Hatteras (Census 2020)
11 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across North Carolina's 485 small towns
#24
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Hatteras → /tools/map-radius-tool · Hatteras, NC · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Hatteras. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 56 miles in the direction of Kill Devil Hills.

Why this happened

North Carolina's loneliest inhabited place is Hatteras — 56 miles from Kill Devil Hills. Hatteras's 152 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 North Carolina small-town resident lives 11 miles from a qualifying anchor.

North Carolina's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Hatteras15256 miKill Devil Hills, NC
2Frisco66454 miKill Devil Hills, NC
3Buxton1,26754 miKill Devil Hills, NC
4Swanquarter1,00346 miWashington, NC
5Avon33944 miKill Devil Hills, NC

How North Carolina compares

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

#25 Iowa
Massena · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#23 Louisiana
Venice · 63 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#26 Alabama
Thomasville · 53 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#22 New Hampshire
Pittsburg · 65 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#21 Arizona
Blue Gap · 66 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Hatteras →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Hatteras, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Kill Devil Hills, NC) sits 56 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 North Carolina 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 North Carolina's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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