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Mapping Tennessee's Loneliest Town: Linden, 31 Miles to a City of 10,000+

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #40 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Linden, TN — population 6,004, Perry County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Tennessee. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Lexington, TN, sitting 31 straight-line miles away. Tennessee has 379 towns under 10,000 residents; Linden is the most isolated among them.

Map: Linden, TN (Tennessee'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, Lexington, sits on its edge 31 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Linden, the most isolated inhabited place in Tennessee. 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. Lawrenceburg, TN33 MICamden, TN34 MISavannah, TN34 MIDickson, TN40 MILexington, TNLindenTENNESSEE 31 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Linden (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Lexington, TN (green dot), separated by 31 straight-line miles.
31 mi
straight-line distance from Linden to Lexington, TN
6,004
year-round residents of Linden (Census 2020)
12 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Tennessee's 379 small towns
#40
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Linden → /tools/map-radius-tool · Linden, TN · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Linden. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 31 miles in the direction of Lexington.

Why this happened

Linden, TN is Tennessee's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 31 miles from Lexington. Tennessee is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 12 miles from a qualifying anchor. Linden's isolation is real to its 6,004 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Tennessee's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Linden6,00431 miLexington, TN
2Tennessee Ridge1,99425 miDickson, TN
3Centerville8,24925 miDickson, TN
4Lobelville2,47324 miCamden, TN
5Dover7,62324 miCadiz, KY

How Tennessee compares

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

#41 Kentucky
Baxter · 29 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#39 Pennsylvania
Coudersport · 31 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#38 Illinois
Milford · 33 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#42 Indiana
Dugger · 27 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#37 Georgia
Bluffton · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Linden →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Linden, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Lexington, TN) sits 31 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 Tennessee 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 Tennessee's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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