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Even in Oklahoma, There Is a Loneliest Town: Boise City, 45 Miles From a City

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #33 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Boise City, OK — population 1,335, Cimarron County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Oklahoma. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Dalhart, TX, sitting 45 straight-line miles away — across the state line in TX. Oklahoma has 487 towns under 10,000 residents; Boise City is the most isolated among them.

Map: Boise City, OK (Oklahoma'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, Dalhart, sits on its edge 45 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Boise City, the most isolated inhabited place in Oklahoma. 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. Guymon, OK60 MIDumas, TX66 MILiberal, KS96 MIBorger, TX99 MIDalhart, TXBoise CityOKLAHOMA 45 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Boise City (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Dalhart, TX (green dot), separated by 45 straight-line miles.
45 mi
straight-line distance from Boise City to Dalhart, TX
1,335
year-round residents of Boise City (Census 2020)
18 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Oklahoma's 487 small towns
#33
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Boise City → /tools/map-radius-tool · Boise City, OK · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Boise City. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 45 miles in the direction of Dalhart.

Why this happened

Boise City, OK is Oklahoma's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 45 miles from Dalhart in TX. Oklahoma is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 18 miles from a qualifying anchor. Boise City's isolation is real to its 1,335 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Oklahoma's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Boise City1,33545 miDalhart, TX
2Alva6,85244 miWoodward, OK
3Longdale70744 miWeatherford, OK
4Gate29743 miLiberal, KS
5Dacoma10242 miEnid, OK

How Oklahoma compares

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

#34 Virginia
Quinby · 43 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#32 West Virginia
Cowen · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#35 Arkansas
De Witt · 41 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#31 Florida
Apalachicola · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#36 Mississippi
Scooba · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Boise City →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Boise City, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Dalhart, TX) sits 45 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 Oklahoma 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 Oklahoma's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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