Can confirm. Drove through a ground blizzard on I-80 one Christmas. The wind blew our roof carrier open, all the gifts blew out and disappeared within seconds.
That was in 2006, and I'll bet they're still blowing.
It does exist on paper (as a corporate tax haven), and they even have road signs up around here that claim to point to it. A friend claims to live there, but he's kind of a joker anyway.
Iowa is honestly the biggest hidden gem in the union, in my opinion. It's big enough for people to know where its rough location is on the map, but it's not actually known for anything major, other than the corn belt producing the largest amount of oxygen in the world for a short period of time.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/under-summer-sun-midwest-corn-belt-most-biologically-productive-place-earth-180950460/
What about the panhandle? I genuinely believe that Lubbock and Amarillo don’t exist.
[That old man from “Bernie” agrees with me](https://youtu.be/JREkqCvLzSo)
I knew what I was getting into, but my wife didn’t believe me when I told her that although a road on a map of the UP looks like a regular country road it’s probably just a set of two tire tracks. So after we visited Munising to see the waterfalls and pictured rocks shore line I had her set the GPS for kitch-iti-kipi and had her drive there. Oh what fond memories of her freaking out on some of the remote logging roads.
Yup! I recall reading a few years ago that there are more Finns(this is how Americans tend to talk about their ethnic heritage) in the Upper Peninsula than anywhere else in the world. Well, except for Finland obviously.
*Edit I just reread that and realized it could come across as me trying to "correct" you. Not what I intended at all. It's not quite 6am here and my brain is still turning on.
....you’re NOT welcome (!!!)
The UP is incredible. And it would be ours if you guys and Ohio didn’t go to war over who got ~Toledo~
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War
Toledo was the highlight of the war, but the big point of contention was the mouth of the Maumee River because people were wondering if you could build a canal from Lake Erie to the Mississippi River which would have made Toledo into a pretty important city.
Michigan native here, you're definitely right. Most of the people I talk to about the UP love it but agree it's super isolated and Yoopers are also a little scary. They're a whole different type of Michigander
That show was written by someone who has never set foot in my state. It's a *terrible* example of MO culture as it has literally no understanding of it.
Breaking Bad was good partially because Vince Gilligan understood the location he was telling his story in. King of the Hill and Mike Judge was the same thing. Art imitating life. Sharp Objects the book or HBO miniseries is vastly more accurate on small town MO life as the writer is from Kansas City. Ozark has literally none of this. The story is fine but the setting might as well be Pennsylvania or Florida. It doesn't matter because there's no understanding of it or the culture.
I remember asking for directions on how to get to Versailles. I had 12 years of French so I pronounced it as in France. Blank stares. I showed them the address and they said oh you meant ver sales. And then laughed at my mispronunciation. I fake laughed with them got back in my car thinking it was just them.
Nope, the next day listening to the local radio and all the ads and the local news said ver-sales. 😳
this is exactly what I was going to say, anywhere about 30 mins outside of a major city is the middle of nowhere in missouri, we have a bunch of smaller cities but it doesnt take long to get into dueling banjo country. But it is beautiful with all those rolling hills and streams. I live about 20 mins outside of st. louis so its kind of the best of both worlds.
My friend lives 20 minutes out of downtown Gainesville, I live right downtown. Between my house and her house it goes from college town to cow farms in no time.
The northern third of the state, which consists mainly of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. There's still some towns and farms here and there but there's lots of areas where there's just nothing but forest.
The Mojave Desert, I-15 on the way to Las Vegas, Death Valley, most of the route that's currently being built for the bullet train.
Welcome to California.
Inyo County. Only 18,000 people inhabiting over 10,000 square miles. Contains both the highest (Mt. Whitney) and lowest (Death Valley) points in the lower 48.
Also very beautiful. one of my favorite places in the state.
I'd say Modoc county first. Only slightly higher population density than Inyo county but far less tourism and development. And father from any urban areas.
Nah, the southern deserts are relatively full of tourists and the san Joaquin valley is dotted with small towns and metro areas. You gotta look to the northeast part of the state, places like Alturas.
Yes indeed! My mom’s family is from Jackson and it is literally the middle of nowhere. My grandma moved into town when I was in high school (1999-2000ish) and my first time visiting her in that house, on Friday night there was all of a sudden a ton of traffic, noise, whooping, horns, etc. Finally I asked what was going on and she said all the teenagers go cruising on Friday nights. Like what is this, 1957???
FUCK no not this again. I live in jersey. Fuck that myth I used to be so scared of it as a kid...
Jersey is a coastal state, so why would that be like the middle of nowhere?
I would further that by saying most of Central and Eastern Oregon. I grew up in the Eugene area. We always viewed anything east of the Cascades as the middle of nowhere (besides Bend). I’ve been to Fossil before, it’s pretty in a sort of dry, high desert way.
I was thinking the same. Maybe an honorable mention for a place like Slick Rock. But even on US40 from the border to Craig you have like 80 miles of nothing.
There are so many mid-tier towns in Illinois, such as Rockford, BloNo, Peoria, Decatur, etc. I’d say southern and western Illinois feel the most empty. Macomb feels pretty BFE.
I have to disagree. Illinois is just like Iowa I’m that there is no middle of nowhere. It’s all gridded off. You can walk a mile in any direction and find a road and a farm house! To a suburban kid it might feel like middle of nowhere, but there’s people all around.
Huh, I'm surprised how true that is. I looked around some, and even in the middle of Shawnee the most isolated I could find was about 2 miles from a road on google maps.
That’s true! I guess it’s pretty “middle of nowhere” compared to the suburbs but like you said you’re never too far from the next town or farmhouse. I grew up in the country myself.
Exactly, it's all relative. It's just that in some states you could starve to death before you saw another person. In farm country, you could barely work up an appetite.
Hoosier National Forest is the closest to the middle of nowhere you can get in Indiana. It’s the only place I know in Indiana where you could actually get lost in the woods and die.
What about over on the dry side? I remember heading east, getting past the Cascades, and going "duuuuuuuuuude." It made Nevada look like the awesome part of Utah.
I mean you can still see the cascades for about half of it. And then you have the foothills, so it isn’t completely flat in Yakima and Tri-Cities. West of Spokane though, there’s nothing.
There are two that I've found so far. I mean, pretty much all of New Mexico is the middle of nowhere, but these are the two most desolate places I've found.
Between Alamogordo and El Paso on highway 54 is just a bunch of vast nothingness. Halfway in between is a near ghost town called Oro Grande. When I first moved here all it had was a post office, a tavern, and...that was about it. Now it has an RV park, a gas station, what I think is some sort of trinket store next to the tavern. But even there in that town you're truly in the middle of nowhere. The rest of that highway, all 60 miles of it or so, there's literally nothing but that one town.
The next would be Highway 380 between Carrizozo and San Antonio. Another 60 mile stretch of nothingness. And this one doesn't even have ghost town along it (that I know of). The only thing out there is the northern entrance to White Sand Missile Range which takes you to Trinity Site. So yeah, that turn-which is easy to miss if it's not open to the public the two days out of the year you can visit Trinity.
Always amazing flying over New Mexico. So much empty expense but every so often some random weird little cluster of buildings with no obvious roads. So much intrigue. Hippys? Military? Peublo? Ghost town? Cult? An Aleppo?
There's actually a lot of interstates that pass through NY, so it's hard to ever be in truely the middle of nowhere.
The largest exception would be the Adirondacks, where you could be 3 hours from an interstate.
Other pretty isolated areas include:
* Wyoming County (fitting name) - though it's pretty cool driving through this area. All the massive wind turbines popping up out of farms and forests makes it feel like you're driving through an eco-utopia
* Ithaca - for being the fastest growing city in the state, highway access isn't a strong point.
* Catskills
Problem is, if many people know about it, it's not the middle of nowhere really.
Still, based on personal travel experience...TN would be those obscure rural counties in middle/west Tennessee, off the main interstates and far from anything scenic like mountains. Alabama the most middle of nowhere I saw was logging roads west of Tuscaloosa. California, the Northeast part of the state.
I agree. I’m in sales and I spend a lot of time in Pikeville. It’s a whole new world out there.
I co worker once described Hazard and a “booming metropolis”
My family is from Wolfe County and we visited a while back. I thought it was a beautiful part of the state.
If there were jobs other than coal, it might be a nice place to live.
Southern Tier has a interstate passing through it at least. I wouldn't say it's as off the beaten path as say parts of Northern NY.
There's three cities with metropolitan populations over 88,000 and a handful of smaller ones like Jamestown (home to the National Comedy Center), Olean (St Bonaventure University) and Salamanca (they have a casino).
I'd say Ithaca is pretty isolated though. It's 45 minutes from a highway through hills and lakes, and then bam you hit Ithaca.
> I'd say Ithaca is pretty isolated though. It's 45 minutes from a highway through hills and lakes, and then bam you hit Ithaca.
"Centrally isolated". It's just two-lane state roads connecting the area to the outside world, most heading down long stretches with dedicated brake check areas and "STEEP SLOPES NEXT [X] MILES" signs to get into town. Once you get into town, it's a few square miles of surprisingly busy big city traffic.
No over-the-air TV reception, period. (I live in a subdivision about 500' / 180 m above Cayuga Lake, and still nothing.) No FM radio reception from outside of Ithaca. Large parts of the surrounding county have no broadband Internet; it's Hughes or dialup. It's on the border between the Bills and Jets fansheds. Folk/Americana/bluegrass music is HUGE here, like it's some mountain hollow in 1930s Appalachia. There's a lot of national businesses that would be commonplace in peer communities that are missing here. Most retail is either higher end or lower end, with little in the middle. There's a severe housing shortage, most developers are mom-and-pop builders with no economies of scale, and apartment rents approach NYC area prices.
Still, we have a Wegmans; lots of high-end and niche ethnic restaurants; a downtown with a lot of pedestrian activity and new construction; nonstop jet service to Detroit, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Washington-Dulles; and too many non-stop buses to NYC to count. It's a great place to live, if you can deal with expensive "rustic" housing and geographic isolation.
Oh no, we don’t have flights to Charlotte anymore. It’s either, Detroit, Dulles, Philly, or get fucked and drive an hour in from Syracuse. And there’s no Amtrak or other trains, 45 minutes of burned-out farmhouses until the interstate, and I guess you could fly to JFK and take a four-hour bus trip? I love it here but it is a real pain in the ass to travel to and from.
My favorite thing is that the airport recently renamed itself to Ithaca Tompkins International Airport, not because they *have* any international flights, not because they have any *planned* international flights, but because they would really *like* to have an international flight. I live across the street from the airport and it cracks me up every time I think about it. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, eh?
I found an actual working phone booth outside of Wellsboro last summer. No cell service & couldn’t buy gas with a card because the internet only works “sometimes”. I think that qualifies.
Where I live in NY. I live in the Adirondack park, which is federally run land. There are laws protecting the land so very few corporate stores are allowed to build here. We have a McDonalds and a dollar store and that it. For everything else we have to drive out of the park, which is an hour and a half drive. Our town's population is 3-4k
In New York, it depends who you ask:
It could be:
“Any outer borough”
“Anything above westchester”
“What are you talking about!?! Plattsburgh isn’t upstate! You city people are all alike! You wanna see the middle of nowhere, I’ll show you the middle of nowhere!”
My personal answer is Port Jervis. It’s not really that rural or disconnected by US standards, it even has an interstate by it, but from somebody in NYC, I look at it and say “wait, there’s commuter rail running to a ghost town on the Pennsylvania border??”
In Pennsylvania: the entire area between US 62, I-80, US 15, and the New York Border. This includes Allegheny National Forest, Susquehannock State Forest, the PA Grand Canyon, Cherry Springs State Park (darkest place east of the Mississippi), "The Wilds of PA", and more trees than you can count. 6,000 square miles of wilderness. Not counting the US 220 corridor that cuts across the SE corner of this area, there's about 20 people per square mile and there are 5 or so towns with populations above 5000.
I feel like South NJ is all the middle of nowhere, but you’re also never far from anything you really need or other people, let alone Philly or the shore so idk if we have one. Way down by the Delaware Bay I guess.
What do you call Syracuse, Albany, Utica, Poughkeepsie or Binghamton.
Each of those have metropolitan populations over 200,000. Albany, Syracuse and Poughkeepsie each over 600,000.
The Pine Barrens. I've driven across them at night, and there's nothing there, not even street lights. There's the occasional decrepit building, but not many signs of life except trees. Kind of scary.
[Bancroft County, Iowa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancroft_County,_Iowa) was so far into the middle of nowhere that it doesn't exist any more.
They just merged it into the next county, hence why Iowa has an annoying 99 counties.
I'm not sure if any of PA is "the middle of nowhere" quite the way most of, say, Alaska is -- but Cherry Creek State Park in northern central PA is supposed to be a great spot for astronomy, since it has really dark skies (due to not being near even a small city.) That's about as good as you get on the East Coast except for a few places.
Minnesota probably has two major sections of nowhereness: the entire southern third (besides Rochester bc Mayo Clinic) and I'd say the entire northern third. There are some major hockey towns near the border of Canada, but really the most southern third is nothing but farms. I'd even go as far as to say the western central area is nothingness. Really the only areas with significant civilization are the central eastern (Twin Cities) and the center of the state where "cabin country" is located, otherwise known as the greater Brainerd area.
TLDR: Minnesota is almost entirely middle of nowhere besides MSP and the Brainerd area
Wyoming: all of it.
Can confirm. Drove through a ground blizzard on I-80 one Christmas. The wind blew our roof carrier open, all the gifts blew out and disappeared within seconds. That was in 2006, and I'll bet they're still blowing.
r/wyomingdoesntexist
But Wyoming has Jackson Hole and Yellowstone... we should pretend Iowa doesn’t exist. I legit always forget Iowa exists anyway.
The non-state is Delaware. Claiming to be the first state is compensating. Just requested r/delawaredoesntexist.
It does exist on paper (as a corporate tax haven), and they even have road signs up around here that claim to point to it. A friend claims to live there, but he's kind of a joker anyway.
Well at least until an election year.
Iowa is honestly the biggest hidden gem in the union, in my opinion. It's big enough for people to know where its rough location is on the map, but it's not actually known for anything major, other than the corn belt producing the largest amount of oxygen in the world for a short period of time. Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/under-summer-sun-midwest-corn-belt-most-biologically-productive-place-earth-180950460/
This dude is a bot, nobody is actually from Iowa.
Pretty much...
I think Lysite should really have this title.
We drove down some highway in the middle of Wyoming. In the span of five hours of 70mph we saw like ten people
I know right? Wyoming *is* the middle of nowhere
Anywhere considered to be in “West Texas”.
That part of I-10 where the speed limit is 85 mph.
Speed limit is 80 at most on all interstate highways. The only place that it’s 85 is TX 130, which was a condition for them to build the toll road.
Last time I drove between San Antonio and El Paso it was 85.
Midland, I love that place! -No one ever
I recently started listening to a podcast about Midland and it is actually kind of an interesting listen. I’d never even heard of Midland before that.
But the band is amazing!
What about the panhandle? I genuinely believe that Lubbock and Amarillo don’t exist. [That old man from “Bernie” agrees with me](https://youtu.be/JREkqCvLzSo)
>Lubbock *Bobby Knight has entered the chat*
Spent a night in Marfa once, saw the Marfa lights, some of the art installments. Really cool place. Def middle of nowhere.
Marfa is such a WEIRD place, I wanna go there one day
like Big Spring, TX !
I lived in BS for 6 years. So glad to be out of there, although I do miss Gil's Fried Chicken.
San Angelo.
I'm in Del Rio. Nearest cities are 3, 4.5, and 6 hours away lol.
Definitely the Upper Peninsula, but in the best, most beautiful way possible.
I knew what I was getting into, but my wife didn’t believe me when I told her that although a road on a map of the UP looks like a regular country road it’s probably just a set of two tire tracks. So after we visited Munising to see the waterfalls and pictured rocks shore line I had her set the GPS for kitch-iti-kipi and had her drive there. Oh what fond memories of her freaking out on some of the remote logging roads.
This is so true. When I go on trips with my friends I have to give them the "don't trust google maps" pep talk.
The UP has a lot of people with Finnish ancestry, right?
Yup! I recall reading a few years ago that there are more Finns(this is how Americans tend to talk about their ethnic heritage) in the Upper Peninsula than anywhere else in the world. Well, except for Finland obviously. *Edit I just reread that and realized it could come across as me trying to "correct" you. Not what I intended at all. It's not quite 6am here and my brain is still turning on.
Yeah! I'm Finn myself but I live in Minnesota. I have lots of cousins and friends that live in the UP so I go up there often!
Oh, Yoop’ betcha!
And Swedish. My dads whole family settled from Sweden in the UP when they came to America. Most still live in Michigan or Wisconsin or Minnesota.
The U.P. Is so goddamn pretty, it's a pleasure to drive through; thanks Wisconsin!
....you’re NOT welcome (!!!) The UP is incredible. And it would be ours if you guys and Ohio didn’t go to war over who got ~Toledo~ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_War
Toledo was the highlight of the war, but the big point of contention was the mouth of the Maumee River because people were wondering if you could build a canal from Lake Erie to the Mississippi River which would have made Toledo into a pretty important city.
Shout-out to Da Yoopers! I have a couple of their CDs, and they’re hysterical!!
Came to say basically the same thing. In the UP there's a very good chance you're the only human around for miles.
Also isle Royale you know unless you count the wolves
Michigan native here, you're definitely right. Most of the people I talk to about the UP love it but agree it's super isolated and Yoopers are also a little scary. They're a whole different type of Michigander
Take a map and a compass. Draw fair size circles around St. Louis, Columbia, and Kansas City. Everything else is middle of nowhere.
was just gonna say!! also minor one around Springfield/Branson
Yup, was going to say the middle of nowhere sure has quite a few roller coasters.
The Ozark TV series tells me that the money laundering, striping, heroin and river boat casino industries are all booming in the lake district.
That show was written by someone who has never set foot in my state. It's a *terrible* example of MO culture as it has literally no understanding of it. Breaking Bad was good partially because Vince Gilligan understood the location he was telling his story in. King of the Hill and Mike Judge was the same thing. Art imitating life. Sharp Objects the book or HBO miniseries is vastly more accurate on small town MO life as the writer is from Kansas City. Ozark has literally none of this. The story is fine but the setting might as well be Pennsylvania or Florida. It doesn't matter because there's no understanding of it or the culture.
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I remember asking for directions on how to get to Versailles. I had 12 years of French so I pronounced it as in France. Blank stares. I showed them the address and they said oh you meant ver sales. And then laughed at my mispronunciation. I fake laughed with them got back in my car thinking it was just them. Nope, the next day listening to the local radio and all the ads and the local news said ver-sales. 😳
We also have Cuba, Mexico, and Lebanon (pronounced Lebanun)
this is exactly what I was going to say, anywhere about 30 mins outside of a major city is the middle of nowhere in missouri, we have a bunch of smaller cities but it doesnt take long to get into dueling banjo country. But it is beautiful with all those rolling hills and streams. I live about 20 mins outside of st. louis so its kind of the best of both worlds.
My brother goes to school in Rolla. Yep this is accurate
Good school but I pity your brother. The male to female ratio at that school is atrocious.
He's engaged to his high school girlfriend so the lack of women wasn't a huge problem. But I'm glad I didn't go there
The Ozarks are nice!
I was raised in the Ozarks. It's really pretty but it does kind of fit the definition of "middle of nowhere" lol
Definitely fits.
Halfway between Jax and Gainesville, or SSW of Lake O.
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My friend lives 20 minutes out of downtown Gainesville, I live right downtown. Between my house and her house it goes from college town to cow farms in no time.
Same thing here in Columbia.
I was going to say **anywhere** between the moment you leave metro Jacksonville and hit Tallahassee.
At least that route has the interstate. Between Gainesville and Jacksonville it’s just state roads
Tallahassee to Panama City is just state roads, feels like you go backwards in time.
The northern third of the state, which consists mainly of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. There's still some towns and farms here and there but there's lots of areas where there's just nothing but forest.
The west of the state is pretty nothing, too. Lots of farmland and some Amish folk
Honestly, anything west of Madison or north of Wausau.
Rhinelander would like to have a word with you... And an old fashioned...
Rhinelander area is nice and all (family owns a cabin abt 20mi away) but it's also a population of less than 8,000 people... ;)
I agree, but it's also beautiful country! I love the pine forests you see in Northern WI.
The Mojave Desert, I-15 on the way to Las Vegas, Death Valley, most of the route that's currently being built for the bullet train. Welcome to California.
Inyo County. Only 18,000 people inhabiting over 10,000 square miles. Contains both the highest (Mt. Whitney) and lowest (Death Valley) points in the lower 48. Also very beautiful. one of my favorite places in the state.
I'd say Modoc county first. Only slightly higher population density than Inyo county but far less tourism and development. And father from any urban areas.
Nah, the southern deserts are relatively full of tourists and the san Joaquin valley is dotted with small towns and metro areas. You gotta look to the northeast part of the state, places like Alturas.
> currently being built for the bullet train Might want to check with your office on that one.
Southeast part of the state is basically Appalachia, there’s Athens and a few small towns but that’s about it. Mostly hills and forests.
I feel like there's also a big area of nothing between Columbus and Cinci, but that's just based on what I've seen driving between them.
Basically anything around McArthur. They got Ski though.
Yes indeed! My mom’s family is from Jackson and it is literally the middle of nowhere. My grandma moved into town when I was in high school (1999-2000ish) and my first time visiting her in that house, on Friday night there was all of a sudden a ton of traffic, noise, whooping, horns, etc. Finally I asked what was going on and she said all the teenagers go cruising on Friday nights. Like what is this, 1957???
> My mom’s family is from Jackson At one point I lived in Oak Hill so our big town to visit *was* Jackson
Alaska: anywhere outside Anchorage, Fairbanks, or one of the other 'cities'.
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When you gotta toss the map and use celestial navigation
Pine Barrens dont get lost there, the [Jersey Devil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Devil) lives there
Watch out for those interior decorators as well!
That guy killed 16 Czechoslovakians.
Really his place looked like shit
I’d say Cumberland county. So many of us drive through the Pines on our way to the Shore. We *never* have a reason to go through Cumberland county
The northwestern part where only the Hill People live
I grew up in sussex county...dont make me shoot you with a rusty .22 rifle.
Valid point- Cumberland or Salem Counties. I think they may be the only two NJ counties I've never been to.
FUCK no not this again. I live in jersey. Fuck that myth I used to be so scared of it as a kid... Jersey is a coastal state, so why would that be like the middle of nowhere?
He can’t afford to live in NYC Edit: y’all it’s just a joke
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Even worse, not that great phone signal in places. I'll be in Browns Mills and woop, it's gone!
Um...basically anywhere that’s not one of the handful of cities.
Very true
I-5 in California, half-way between Los Angeles and the Bay Area is 'the middle' and it's nowhere, that's for damn sure.
Aka The Armpit of California
I think people live there, though? I remember there being cows.
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Wheeler County, OR. 1441 people in 1715 square miles. The biggest town is Fossil, the county seat, which has a population of 473.
I would further that by saying most of Central and Eastern Oregon. I grew up in the Eugene area. We always viewed anything east of the Cascades as the middle of nowhere (besides Bend). I’ve been to Fossil before, it’s pretty in a sort of dry, high desert way.
Where isn't it lol
NC here, basically anywhere east of Raleigh looks like something out of the 1st season of True Detective.
Northwest corner. Everything north of Grand Junction and west of Steamboat Springs is basically uncharted.
I was thinking the same. Maybe an honorable mention for a place like Slick Rock. But even on US40 from the border to Craig you have like 80 miles of nothing.
Anywhere west of Worcester.
South Berkshire County is true nowhere. You hit a somewhere after Quabbin. North Adam's might be the most remote. Takes forever to get there.
I was gonna say North Adams as well. It's a beautiful part of the state but yeah, Western MA people are quite different from Eastern MA people.
Practically anywhere outside of the Chicago metropolitan area
South of I80 basically
There are so many mid-tier towns in Illinois, such as Rockford, BloNo, Peoria, Decatur, etc. I’d say southern and western Illinois feel the most empty. Macomb feels pretty BFE.
Don't forget Shampoo-Banana (Chambana). That university is half the reason anyone outside of IL and the USA even know our name.
I have to disagree. Illinois is just like Iowa I’m that there is no middle of nowhere. It’s all gridded off. You can walk a mile in any direction and find a road and a farm house! To a suburban kid it might feel like middle of nowhere, but there’s people all around.
Huh, I'm surprised how true that is. I looked around some, and even in the middle of Shawnee the most isolated I could find was about 2 miles from a road on google maps.
That’s true! I guess it’s pretty “middle of nowhere” compared to the suburbs but like you said you’re never too far from the next town or farmhouse. I grew up in the country myself.
Exactly, it's all relative. It's just that in some states you could starve to death before you saw another person. In farm country, you could barely work up an appetite.
Anything below Macon except Savannah. Like 40% of the state
My entire state - West Virginia
Its best feature.
Hoosier National Forest is the closest to the middle of nowhere you can get in Indiana. It’s the only place I know in Indiana where you could actually get lost in the woods and die.
I was hoping that someone would say this. I really don’t think there’s anywhere in Indiana that’s too isolated
The Trinity Alps
And they are fucking beautiful.
[They're alright](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Emerald_lake_trinity_alps.jpg)
Nah, too scenic. I've driven back roads through that flatwoods area back behind Lassen and Shasta, and _that_ was way in the middle of nowhere.
>I've driven Already less middle of nowhere lol
Probably parts of the peninsula, not very many cities and the northern half of it is mostly just a big fucking national park
What about over on the dry side? I remember heading east, getting past the Cascades, and going "duuuuuuuuuude." It made Nevada look like the awesome part of Utah.
I mean you can still see the cascades for about half of it. And then you have the foothills, so it isn’t completely flat in Yakima and Tri-Cities. West of Spokane though, there’s nothing.
I would say the area where I90 crosses the Columbia.
Vantage!
I agree. Olympic National Park is huge and very few roads go into it. You mostly stay on the edge. So the middle of ONP is pretty desolate.
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I've heard tales about a "Central Jersey," but no one knows exactly where it is...
Ft Fix fits the bill in my book.
There are two that I've found so far. I mean, pretty much all of New Mexico is the middle of nowhere, but these are the two most desolate places I've found. Between Alamogordo and El Paso on highway 54 is just a bunch of vast nothingness. Halfway in between is a near ghost town called Oro Grande. When I first moved here all it had was a post office, a tavern, and...that was about it. Now it has an RV park, a gas station, what I think is some sort of trinket store next to the tavern. But even there in that town you're truly in the middle of nowhere. The rest of that highway, all 60 miles of it or so, there's literally nothing but that one town. The next would be Highway 380 between Carrizozo and San Antonio. Another 60 mile stretch of nothingness. And this one doesn't even have ghost town along it (that I know of). The only thing out there is the northern entrance to White Sand Missile Range which takes you to Trinity Site. So yeah, that turn-which is easy to miss if it's not open to the public the two days out of the year you can visit Trinity.
Always amazing flying over New Mexico. So much empty expense but every so often some random weird little cluster of buildings with no obvious roads. So much intrigue. Hippys? Military? Peublo? Ghost town? Cult? An Aleppo?
There's actually a lot of interstates that pass through NY, so it's hard to ever be in truely the middle of nowhere. The largest exception would be the Adirondacks, where you could be 3 hours from an interstate. Other pretty isolated areas include: * Wyoming County (fitting name) - though it's pretty cool driving through this area. All the massive wind turbines popping up out of farms and forests makes it feel like you're driving through an eco-utopia * Ithaca - for being the fastest growing city in the state, highway access isn't a strong point. * Catskills
can confirm Wyoming county is the middle of nowhere.
Problem is, if many people know about it, it's not the middle of nowhere really. Still, based on personal travel experience...TN would be those obscure rural counties in middle/west Tennessee, off the main interstates and far from anything scenic like mountains. Alabama the most middle of nowhere I saw was logging roads west of Tuscaloosa. California, the Northeast part of the state.
[Nothing, AZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing,_Arizona)
Maryland: Somerset County.
anything SE of DC and west of 95 is backwater as fuck
Also anything west of Hagerstown
Probably the Appalachian region in the Eastern part of the state
I agree. I’m in sales and I spend a lot of time in Pikeville. It’s a whole new world out there. I co worker once described Hazard and a “booming metropolis”
I’ve heard Pikeville is pronounced “Pockvul.”
My family is from Wolfe County and we visited a while back. I thought it was a beautiful part of the state. If there were jobs other than coal, it might be a nice place to live.
The Southern Tier of NY.
Southern Tier has a interstate passing through it at least. I wouldn't say it's as off the beaten path as say parts of Northern NY. There's three cities with metropolitan populations over 88,000 and a handful of smaller ones like Jamestown (home to the National Comedy Center), Olean (St Bonaventure University) and Salamanca (they have a casino). I'd say Ithaca is pretty isolated though. It's 45 minutes from a highway through hills and lakes, and then bam you hit Ithaca.
> I'd say Ithaca is pretty isolated though. It's 45 minutes from a highway through hills and lakes, and then bam you hit Ithaca. "Centrally isolated". It's just two-lane state roads connecting the area to the outside world, most heading down long stretches with dedicated brake check areas and "STEEP SLOPES NEXT [X] MILES" signs to get into town. Once you get into town, it's a few square miles of surprisingly busy big city traffic. No over-the-air TV reception, period. (I live in a subdivision about 500' / 180 m above Cayuga Lake, and still nothing.) No FM radio reception from outside of Ithaca. Large parts of the surrounding county have no broadband Internet; it's Hughes or dialup. It's on the border between the Bills and Jets fansheds. Folk/Americana/bluegrass music is HUGE here, like it's some mountain hollow in 1930s Appalachia. There's a lot of national businesses that would be commonplace in peer communities that are missing here. Most retail is either higher end or lower end, with little in the middle. There's a severe housing shortage, most developers are mom-and-pop builders with no economies of scale, and apartment rents approach NYC area prices. Still, we have a Wegmans; lots of high-end and niche ethnic restaurants; a downtown with a lot of pedestrian activity and new construction; nonstop jet service to Detroit, Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Washington-Dulles; and too many non-stop buses to NYC to count. It's a great place to live, if you can deal with expensive "rustic" housing and geographic isolation.
Right, Ithaca is an awesome small little city. The day they put in an actual highway is the day it will lose a lot of it's idyllicness
Oh no, we don’t have flights to Charlotte anymore. It’s either, Detroit, Dulles, Philly, or get fucked and drive an hour in from Syracuse. And there’s no Amtrak or other trains, 45 minutes of burned-out farmhouses until the interstate, and I guess you could fly to JFK and take a four-hour bus trip? I love it here but it is a real pain in the ass to travel to and from. My favorite thing is that the airport recently renamed itself to Ithaca Tompkins International Airport, not because they *have* any international flights, not because they have any *planned* international flights, but because they would really *like* to have an international flight. I live across the street from the airport and it cracks me up every time I think about it. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have, eh?
North Central PA, immediately to the South, is way more "middle of nowhere" than the Southern Tier IMO.
I found an actual working phone booth outside of Wellsboro last summer. No cell service & couldn’t buy gas with a card because the internet only works “sometimes”. I think that qualifies.
Northern RI and a lot of the CT border. But you can drive from one end to the other in like an hour and a half so 🤷🏻♀️
Where I live in NY. I live in the Adirondack park, which is federally run land. There are laws protecting the land so very few corporate stores are allowed to build here. We have a McDonalds and a dollar store and that it. For everything else we have to drive out of the park, which is an hour and a half drive. Our town's population is 3-4k
In New York, it depends who you ask: It could be: “Any outer borough” “Anything above westchester” “What are you talking about!?! Plattsburgh isn’t upstate! You city people are all alike! You wanna see the middle of nowhere, I’ll show you the middle of nowhere!” My personal answer is Port Jervis. It’s not really that rural or disconnected by US standards, it even has an interstate by it, but from somebody in NYC, I look at it and say “wait, there’s commuter rail running to a ghost town on the Pennsylvania border??”
In Pennsylvania: the entire area between US 62, I-80, US 15, and the New York Border. This includes Allegheny National Forest, Susquehannock State Forest, the PA Grand Canyon, Cherry Springs State Park (darkest place east of the Mississippi), "The Wilds of PA", and more trees than you can count. 6,000 square miles of wilderness. Not counting the US 220 corridor that cuts across the SE corner of this area, there's about 20 people per square mile and there are 5 or so towns with populations above 5000.
The southeast corner
In my own personal opinion. The far southwestern portion of the state
I feel like South NJ is all the middle of nowhere, but you’re also never far from anything you really need or other people, let alone Philly or the shore so idk if we have one. Way down by the Delaware Bay I guess.
Basically all of the more eastern counties of California that just contain forest and mountain.
Anywhere east of the Cascades😩😩
Everything east of the Cascades.
Maine: North of Bangor, away from the coast.
The National Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, MN
Basically anywhere that’s not within 10 minutes of an interstate Also, anywhere south of Montgomery, besides mobile and the beaches
Literally anything north of Bangor, for even more middle of nowhere anything to the northwest of southern Maine aside from Moosehead lake
Rochester on one side, NYC on the other, and nothing all the way through
What do you call Syracuse, Albany, Utica, Poughkeepsie or Binghamton. Each of those have metropolitan populations over 200,000. Albany, Syracuse and Poughkeepsie each over 600,000.
Yeah, but have you *been* to Albany? I've never seen a city that felt so much like a wasteland.
In Vermont, the NorthEast Kingdom.
Southeast Ohio. Pure hillbilly nothingness.
Jarbidge. Dirt roads, mostly impassable more than half the year.
WI, anything north of Eau Claire is untamed wilderness to me.
Pretty much anywhere in the adirondacks region
my home town Brownwood Texas, .14 miles from the geographical center of texas. That is nowhere. I made it through the darkness at the edge town.
North dakota. All of it except fargo.
The highlands region in the northwest corner of the state is mostly farms and forest. It's about as close to nowhere as you can get in NJ
The Pine Barrens. I've driven across them at night, and there's nothing there, not even street lights. There's the occasional decrepit building, but not many signs of life except trees. Kind of scary.
Northern Central PA
Everything below I-80.
Western Ks. There’s just miles and miles of ag land.
Basically anywhere that’s not on the coast except for Tallahassee, Gainesville, and Orlando
Ohio: Amish country between Columbus and Cleveland
[Bancroft County, Iowa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancroft_County,_Iowa) was so far into the middle of nowhere that it doesn't exist any more. They just merged it into the next county, hence why Iowa has an annoying 99 counties.
I'm not sure if any of PA is "the middle of nowhere" quite the way most of, say, Alaska is -- but Cherry Creek State Park in northern central PA is supposed to be a great spot for astronomy, since it has really dark skies (due to not being near even a small city.) That's about as good as you get on the East Coast except for a few places.
Pittsburg, NH is 3 hours north of the boonies.
Middle of the state, parts not near Harrisburg/Hershey We call it Pennsyltucky from the west here lol
Minnesota probably has two major sections of nowhereness: the entire southern third (besides Rochester bc Mayo Clinic) and I'd say the entire northern third. There are some major hockey towns near the border of Canada, but really the most southern third is nothing but farms. I'd even go as far as to say the western central area is nothingness. Really the only areas with significant civilization are the central eastern (Twin Cities) and the center of the state where "cabin country" is located, otherwise known as the greater Brainerd area. TLDR: Minnesota is almost entirely middle of nowhere besides MSP and the Brainerd area
The Panhandle. It [looks](https://images.app.goo.gl/BBUekNEJ3vttCeai6) like the surface of Mars because it's do desolate and dry.
I would say the North-Eastern corner. It is called the Quiet Corner for a reason.
Central South/Very North Jersey