Texas's Loneliest Town Is Presidio — 119 Miles From the Nearest City of 10,000+
Presidio, TX — population 3,226, Presidio County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Texas. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Fort Stockton, TX, sitting 119 straight-line miles away. Texas has 957 towns under 10,000 residents; Presidio is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Presidio. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 119 miles in the direction of Fort Stockton.
Why this happened
Texas is huge enough that even with major metros densely concentrated in the central/eastern corridors, its loneliest town sits in West Texas or the Trans-Pecos — typically 100+ miles from any qualifying anchor. Counties like Brewster, Presidio, Terrell, and Hudspeth cover thousands of square miles with very low population density.
The Trans-Pecos and Big Bend regions are larger than most New England states combined yet hold fewer than 40,000 residents. Marfa (the famous arts town) and Alpine are the largest places, neither hitting 10,000. The actual ranking depends on which specific year's Census; the geography is durable.
Texas's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Texas, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Presidio | 3,226 | 119 mi | Fort Stockton, TX |
| 2 | Redford | 71 | 114 mi | Fort Stockton, TX |
| 3 | Big Bend National Park | 331 | 112 mi | Fort Stockton, TX |
| 4 | Terlingua | 641 | 106 mi | Fort Stockton, TX |
| 5 | Marfa | 2,633 | 97 mi | Fort Stockton, TX |
How Texas compares
The states ranked closest to Texas on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Presidio →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Presidio, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Fort Stockton, TX) sits 119 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 Texas 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 Texas's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Texas. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/texas. CC-BY 4.0.