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Virginia's Most Remote Town Is Quinby — Just 43 Miles From Poquoson

By SimpleMapLab·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #34 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Quinby, VA — population 219, Accomack County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Virginia. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Poquoson, VA, sitting 43 straight-line miles away. Virginia has 578 towns under 10,000 residents; Quinby is the most isolated among them.

Map: Quinby, VA (Virginia'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, Poquoson, sits on its edge 43 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Quinby, the most isolated inhabited place in Virginia. 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. Hayes, VA44 MIGloucester, VA45 MIYorktown, VA47 MIPrincess Anne, MD47 MIPoquoson, VAQuinbyVIRGINIA 43 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Quinby (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Poquoson, VA (green dot), separated by 43 straight-line miles.
43 mi
straight-line distance from Quinby to Poquoson, VA
219
year-round residents of Quinby (Census 2020)
15 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Virginia's 578 small towns
#34
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Quinby → /tools/map-radius-tool · Quinby, VA · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Quinby. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 43 miles in the direction of Poquoson.

Why this happened

Quinby, VA is Virginia's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 43 miles from Poquoson. Virginia is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 15 miles from a qualifying anchor. Quinby's isolation is real to its 219 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Virginia's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Quinby21943 miPoquoson, VA
2Painter2,67342 miHayes, VA
3Wachapreague33841 miPrincess Anne, MD
4Keller28840 miPrincess Anne, MD
5Willis Wharf27840 miHayes, VA

How Virginia compares

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

#35 Arkansas
De Witt · 41 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#33 Oklahoma
Boise City · 45 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#36 Mississippi
Scooba · 35 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#32 West Virginia
Cowen · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#31 Florida
Apalachicola · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Quinby →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Quinby, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Poquoson, VA) sits 43 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 Virginia 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 Virginia's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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