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 early-1900s 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.
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.