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Wisconsin's Most Remote Town Is Park Falls — Just 49 Miles From Hayward

By Marko Visic·Published 13 May 2026·Rank #30 of 50 states·↑ All 50 states

Park Falls, WI — population 4,292, Price County — is the most isolated inhabited place in Wisconsin. The nearest city of 10,000+ residents is Hayward, WI, sitting 49 straight-line miles away. Wisconsin has 591 towns under 10,000 residents; Park Falls is the most isolated among them.

Map: Park Falls, WI (Wisconsin'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, Hayward, sits on its edge 49 miles away.The brick-red dot marks Park Falls, the most isolated inhabited place in Wisconsin. 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. Rhinelander, WI50 MIAshland, WI50 MIMedford, WI52 MIMerrill, WI56 MIHayward, WIPark FallsWISCONSIN 49 MIsimplemaplab.com / studies / most-remote-places
Park Falls (red dot) and the nearest 10,000+ city, Hayward, WI (green dot), separated by 49 straight-line miles.
49 mi
straight-line distance from Park Falls to Hayward, WI
4,292
year-round residents of Park Falls (Census 2020)
15 mi
average distance to nearest anchor across Wisconsin's 591 small towns
#30
of 50 states ranked by their loneliest town's isolation
Open a radius around Park Falls → /tools/map-radius-tool · Park Falls, WI · 50 mi
The link opens the SimpleMapLab Map Radius Tool with a 50-mile circle drawn around Park Falls. Try expanding the radius to see how far you have to look before encountering any 10,000+ city — the answer is roughly 49 miles in the direction of Hayward.

Why this happened

Park Falls, WI is Wisconsin's most remote inhabited place — but "remote" is relative here: just 49 miles from Hayward. Wisconsin is among the more densely populated US states; the average small-town resident lives 15 miles from a qualifying anchor. Park Falls's isolation is real to its 4,292 residents, even if the numbers are modest compared to Montana or Nevada.

Wisconsin's 5 most isolated towns

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

#TownPop.Distance to nearest 10K+Nearest city
1Park Falls4,29249 miHayward, WI
2Fifield66345 miMedford, WI
3Presque Isle1,04244 miRhinelander, WI
4Mercer1,54944 miAshland, WI
5Manitowish Waters94741 miRhinelander, WI

How Wisconsin compares

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

#31 Florida
Apalachicola · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#29 Hawaii
Naalehu · 49 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#28 New York
Blue Mountain Lake · 51 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#32 West Virginia
Cowen · 46 mi to the nearest 10K+ city
#27 Missouri
Blythedale · 52 mi to the nearest 10K+ city

Draw your own radius

Open a 50-mile circle around Park Falls →

Try the 100-mile radius to see whether a major city falls inside — for Park Falls, it doesn't, because the nearest qualifying city (Hayward, WI) sits 49 miles away.

More about Wisconsin

See the full breakdown of Wisconsin's counties at /states/wisconsin/counties — population, area, median income, and county seat for every county, plus a labeled printable map. The companion study 100-mile radius around Wisconsin's capital measures the share of Wisconsin'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 Wisconsin 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 Wisconsin's loneliest. Full methodology on the hub page.

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