Encountering a line in a set-in-19th-century story got me to thinking: the scout rides up and informs the people, “The nearest settlement is 50 miles away.”
The question is thus framed as, in the part of the US between Canada and Mexico (the “lower 48”), is there a place where you can walk on the firm ground (not wade or sink) that is 50 miles from a town, and by extension, how far can you get from civilization (where you can stand/walk)? For clarity, the lower bound of “town” is a place where people (more than one) live year-round and there is at least one public establishment where a stranger can enter and do business (which can include a church or library, to stretch the definition of “business”).
Glasgow Montana? Can’t tell you what’s within a 50 mile radius, but they say it’s over 100 miles to the next city.
They do use this language in the wiki though: “…is the most populous city for over 110 miles…”, which likely means there is less population entity not that far away.
The best I can find so far is off of Highway 305 in Nevada between Bald Mt. and Mt. Moses. I think you can get about 40 miles from any settlement somewhere in there.
Glasgow and the Pecos Wilderness don’t meet the OP’s criteria. There are settlements (hell, post offices and LDS churches!) within 10-20 miles of the places cited.
A hell of a lot of Nevada is 50 miles from a settlement. I am sure that is true in most of the west of the Rockies states, although not to the extent of Nevada. I know someone in Nevada who drives over 50 miles just to get her mail.
My favorite “empty space” is the area around the OR-ID-NEV border.
Playing with Google Earth there seems to be a place in N. Nevada that’s about !~45-50 miles from McDermitt, Tuscarora, Owyhee and Dickshooter. (Myself, I prefer to keep as much distance as possible from Dickshooter as I can.)
Said Dickshooter doesn’t seem to be an actual town, so that gives some more room to the N., but the McDermitt-Owyhee axis seems to be the limit. S. of that seems “roomier” than N. of it going into Idaho.
I don’t think this is likely to win. It’s indeed wilderness, but only about 12 miles from the village of Truchas NM - home ~500 people and a church, store, library and Post Office.
18.76 miles. You can drive this distance in 15 minutes on a freeway. But it is also the furthest away you can get in the “Lower 48” US states from roads, machines, and motors.
That’s just from a road, not from a town. ftg might be right. Just east of the junction of Nevada, Oregon and Idaho is far from anything. The ugliest patch of America to boot.
“Ugliest”? Sounds like you have not been to Butte Montana (home of the famous “White Darth Vader” statue). The south side of Memphis is also a contender. Hell, Las Vegas is quite hideous (primarily the one in Nevada, which is emblematic of everything wrong with the country, but the one in NM is none too pretty). There are many urban areas in the country that are far uglier than the serest stretch of desert in the west.
I disagree. I’d rather look at Levittown or Hell’s Kitchen back alleys than that stretch of 395. Desert can be quite beautiful. That area…can’t. It’s where God dumped all the ugly that got removed when she made the Grand Canyon and Zion.
I was going to suggest Glacier National Park, but it turns out that there are a few patches of private land in there with families living on them. And of course there are visitors’ centers and the like in the park where a stranger can do business.
There are also residences inside Yellowstone, but they’re all at the northern edge. Maybe somewhere down in the southern end would qualify?
I thought it was somewhere in the Frank Church–River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho. Based on my road atlas, it certainly looks like there is a place more than 20 miles from any town there. Possibly more than 30.
There are some people looking for this and, as the article notes, defining “remote” can be a bit tricky. The kinda sad thing is, after trying to find these places, they note that nothing ever feels truly remote anymore. There is always some bit of civilization not too far away.
Moab, Green River, Monticello, Hanksville, Torrey, that area is pretty well pocked with towns. On foot, getting to them might be rather brutal, but none of them are more than 30 miles from the most remote centerpoint.
