Meet Frenchglen: The Oregon Town That Lives 120 Miles From the Nearest 10,000+ City
Frenchglen, OR — population 93, Harney County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Oregon. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Winnemucca, NV, sitting 120 straight-line miles away — across the state line in NV. Oregon has 273 towns under 10,000 residents; Frenchglen is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Frenchglen. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 120 miles in the direction of Winnemucca.
Why this happened
Frenchglen, Oregon is the state's most isolated inhabited place. The tiny ranch settlement — population just 93 — sits in the high desert of Harney County, 120 miles from Winnemucca, Nevada (the nearest 10,000-resident city) and even farther from Bend or Burns to the north. Frenchglen is named for late-1800s cattle baron Pete French, whose ranch dominated the region.
Oregon's southeast quadrant — Harney, Malheur, Lake counties — covers roughly 25,000 square miles with under 30,000 residents combined. The terrain is the western edge of the Great Basin: high alkaline desert, sparse population, single-lane highways with hundred-mile gaps between gas stations.
Oregon's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Oregon, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Frenchglen | 93 | 120 mi | Winnemucca, NV |
| 2 | Diamond | 99 | 112 mi | Caldwell, ID |
| 3 | Princeton | 141 | 107 mi | Caldwell, ID |
| 4 | Adel | 84 | 99 mi | Klamath Falls, OR |
| 5 | Plush | 117 | 99 mi | Klamath Falls, OR |
How Oregon compares
The states ranked closest to Oregon on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Frenchglen →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Frenchglen, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Winnemucca, NV) sits 120 miles away.
More about Oregon
See the full breakdown of Oregon's counties at /states/oregon/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around Oregon's capital measures the share of Oregon'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 Oregon 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 Oregon's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Oregon. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/oregon. CC-BY 4.0.