Why This Montana Town is the Most Isolated in the U.S.

Glasgow, Montana, is the most isolated town in the contiguous U.S.

The American West is known for its wide open spaces, but nowhere is quite as wide open as the area around Glasgow, Montana. 

Crunching some numbers back in 2018 in an effort to definitively define “the middle of nowhere,” The Washington Post found that a whopping 98% of Americans in the contiguous U.S. live within an hour of some kind of urban center (that is, a metropolitan area with at least 75,000 people). 

But Glasgow, located in the northeast corner of the state, is an estimated 4.5 hours from the nearest urban center, making it the most isolated town (with a population of 1,000 or more) in the Lower 48. 

Glasgow was founded in 1887 as a railroad town, and during World War II was home to the Glasgow Army Airfield, which eventually transformed into the Glasgow Valley County Airport. 

After a nearby Air Force base left town in the late ’60s, Glasgow’s population settled around 3,000. 

Although it’s now the most remote town on the mainland, many towns in Alaska rival Glasgow’s “middle of nowhere” claim when it comes to the nation as a whole. 

Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, is the U.S.’s northernmost city, is only accessible by plane, and is 500 miles away from Fairbanks. In other words, Alaska takes the idea of “wide open spaces” to a whole new level.