Mapping Vermont's Loneliest Town: Beecher Falls Sits 72 Miles From Farmington in ME
Beecher Falls, VT — population 104, Essex County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Vermont. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Farmington, ME, sitting 72 straight-line miles away — across the state line in ME. Vermont has 235 towns under 10,000 residents; Beecher Falls is the most isolated among them.
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Beecher Falls. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 72 miles in the direction of Farmington.
Why this happened
Vermont's loneliest inhabited place is Beecher Falls — 72 miles from Farmington in ME. Beecher Falls's 104 residents are the most-removed-from-civilization population in the state, though the gap is not as dramatic as in the Mountain West or Great Plains states. The average Vermont small-town resident lives 18 miles from a qualifying anchor.
Vermont's 5 most isolated towns
The top 5 most-isolated inhabited places in Vermont, sorted by distance to the nearest 10,000+ city.
| # | Town | Pop. | Distance to nearest 10K+ | Nearest city |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beecher Falls | 104 | 72 mi | Farmington, ME |
| 2 | Canaan | 801 | 67 mi | Barre, VT |
| 3 | Norton | 108 | 60 mi | Montpelier, VT |
| 4 | Derby Line | 1,534 | 57 mi | Saint Albans, VT |
| 5 | Island Pond | 1,315 | 54 mi | Barre, VT |
How Vermont compares
The states ranked closest to Vermont on this metric. Click any for the dedicated breakdown.
Draw your own radius
Open a 50-mile circle around Beecher Falls →
Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Beecher Falls, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Farmington, ME) sits 72 miles away.
More about Vermont
See the full breakdown of Vermont's counties at /states/vermont/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around Vermont's capital measures the share of Vermont'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 Vermont 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 Vermont's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.
Suggested citation: SimpleMapLab (2026). The Loneliest Towns in America: Vermont. Part of the Most Remote Inhabited Places study. Retrieved from https://www.simplemaplab.com/studies/most-remote-places/vermont. CC-BY 4.0.