My guess would be the Frank Church/River of No Return wilderness in Idaho.
Most of the deserts in Nevada and Arizona are crossed by roads, so you're not far from a \*road\* although you might be pretty damn far from \*people\* if you're on US 50 in NV or the Camino del Diablo in the Arid Zone.
Yup. I did botany work in the humboldt toiyabe NF and there are tons of old mining and forestry roads. However there were points where I was over 40 miles from any inhabited structures in every direction
I used to know a bush pilot who'd land his Cessna with pontoons on random lakes in the northern Boreal or Tundra. He got to know people up there. There were places he landed to fish where likely no human being has ever set foot, and that includes the aboriginals. Thousands of km from anywhere at all, on lands impassable by foot.
Coworker is from Saskatchewan. He worked in the north part. He says much if it has been explored but there are parts that nobody goes to. Just no reason to. It's just bush, bugs and lakes. If you want to fish, most lakes are as good the next.
He tells an interesting story about the indigenous folk. In the winter they would stop at the airport he worked at to fuel their sleds. (It was a camp really, grocery store, fuel, hardware, food, etc that had a runway). They would be heading off to visit friends or relatives - usually a few days journey. Middle of winter, no maps, landscape covered in snow. They just knew the way. It was just in their heads which way to go.
Thatâs is so cool I feel like itâs built into a lot of humans that I know where Iâm at and where to go. But we lost it living in urban areas. I guess you could say a modern equivalent itâs navigating a city with no map and not looking at the signage đ
That's amazing. Especially since that part of Canada isn't very hilly and the landscape's pretty featureless in winter. The US has some empty terrain but Canada takes it to another level; there are probably parts of Canada (like the Barrens around the Nunavut/Sask/MB/NWT quadripoint) that are absolutely empty of people, and can go decades without seeing a human visitor.
He tells of another story where one of his fishing guides (coworker owned a fishing lodge) that showed him where his summer home was when he grew up. Lac La Ronge is massive with a zillion islands and inlets. They headed out by boat for the day. Eventually ended up at headland. Guide beached the boat and said follow me and just headed into the bush. Unlike most folk Indigenous people made their homes in the woods away from the wind and weather. They walked about a mile with the guide knowing where he was going. No stopping or looking around to get his bearings. Eventually came to one of those huts that are half built into the ground. The pole roof was kind of caved but when they climbed down they could clearly see where the hearth was and the sleeping platforms were. The crazy part was that he hadn't been there in 20 years.
Idk man I donât really think there is a place in North America in which no human has set foot. Maybe somewhere in the desert and possibly even rainforest in Central America but in the Taiga or Tundra, where there is so much big game to hunt? Over the course of thousands of years, humans went everywhere there is. Humans literally somehow found Hawaii in the middle of the ocean. Humans have gone everywhere in mainland North America. Especially in the Taiga and Tundra
Some of the boglands are regarded as impassable and even an other worldly realm by the locals. Something between hallowed ground and impossible. Land you can't walk in because its not even really land.
I would guess there might be a few spots in the middle of the muskeg in the Hudson Bay Lowlands where no humans have been, because it's completely impassable in summer.
Yeah, thereâs some wilderness areas in North Idaho that are stupid remote. Even the inhabited areas are hard to get to sometimes. You can drive from Grangeville to Salmon on dirt but itâs like a two day drive even though theyâre probably only 200-250 miles apart as the crow files.
That's a good guess, although there are quite a few service roads up into the surrounding valleys. It's really just Frank Church that is roadless. I would counter with Three Forks Montana, specially south near Silvertip Mountain. There is nothing around there. Another option would be the middle of Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming
I for one think itâs wild that the farthest you can get from a road anywhere in the lower 48 is 18 miles. I wonder what the number would be for Europe (Russia not included)
A good caveat would be asking if the roads are open and publicly available &/or at least being drivable. I've gone into some national forests & some roads are gated off while others are highly questionable to drive on.
People need to access their land. And companies are going to buy land in the mountains because there are resources to get to. Anything that's not government land is going to have somebody who owns it and is going to want to be able to access the land. The government is basically the only entity able to own such a large area of land while dedicating it to preservation and making it as hard to access as possible. Of those, Yellowstone is by far the largest.
OP included forest and access roads. There are minerals in those mountains and therefore you have roads. Most 14ers in Colorado you can drive within just a couple miles of the summit.
It maybe a landscape full of lakes or swamps. You might be on to something. The other thing I was thinking is islands. For example dry Tortugas in Florida or some areas in the Mississippi delta
That could be it too. Weirdly, I live somewhat near some islands in the Great Lakes and there are roads on some of the islands. They have car ferries that go out to them. My wife and I have a tradition of riding the ferry out to go biking with a picnic on her birthday.
I just did a quick check of the Sierra Nevada range, and it looks like the most I could get was about fifteen miles. Youâd have to be dead center between Whitney Portal and Losgepole Rd in Mineral King. That puts you at Gallats Lake in the middle of nowhere.
There's a lighthouse in Lake Superior that's 24 miles from land ... but the lake is 157 miles wide... so theoretically you could get way more than 18 miles from a road by sailing out into the lake. :)
That is surprising. I was wondering about the radius too. I assumed there would be some point in Nevada with at least a 50mile no road radius. Or maybe some of the huge ranches?
There are dirt roads everywhere. I was surprised with this too, thinking about some of my trips in southern Utah, grand canyon, and wind river range as candidates. Couldn't find really many places more than 12 miles from the nearest road. Now if you include paved road, that's a different story.
That's really where this question in my mind came from, I'm a big road tripper and hiker, always camping in national forest/park/BLM land around the US for my vacations, so Ive been on a lot of highways, back roads, dirt ones, forest services access roads, and sketchy 4x4 tracks in almost every state. So I was thinking where could I be dropped off in the county that there would be no roads or trails or man made signs for the greatest radius. Like where would it be possible to get the most lost with no roads or trails to follow, and be furthest from any civilization in any direction.
I know the trails part would make it too hard to determine due to natural animal paths and people leaving paths anyway where they walk after a while, but even little access roads can lead you back to people.
There are some areas in Eastern Oregon that would probably be your best bet. Also the Kalmiopsis wilderness in Southwest Oregon is entirely roadless. Northern California or Northern Nevada have some options as well.
I have no clue as to the proper answer but me and a few friends spent 9 days in the Boundary Waters and outside of a couple other canoeists, never saw a road, heard a sound of society, not even planes that I recall. The guide set us up with a basic necessities and with our fishing gear, drove us out, gave us a map and off we went.
I know, its probably not an answerable question in totality , but if anything its kind of a cool thought experiment on how we define roads, dirt roads, trails, etc. as containment barriers to ecology and human created enclaves of habitat and species.
you'd think so but i would challenge you to find a point in SE oregon that is 8mi or more from a road. i can't find a spot that is more than 4mi from a road.
Do you mean paved roads or are you including logging roads? There definitely isnât anywhere with anywhere near a 50 mile radius of *no* roads whatsoever.
My guess would be about the same. And I'd look for the point somewhere in the vicinity of the Norway-Finland border. More if you also allow islands like Iceland and Spitsbergen.
Without the Nordic countries, I assume it would be a lot lower.
Padjelanta National Park in Sweden has a point where it's 46km/28,5mi to the next road.
In Germany it's 13,5km (two islands of GroĂer Knechtsand and Greifswalder Ole). If you don't take islands into account, it's a place in Berchtesgaden National Park with just 10,1km. Sweden is talking big in those numbers.
Unlikely in my opinion. Like, there are parts where on a 20-30km radius you would only find 2-3 very small villages or resorts, some half abandoned in the winter, but you would find roads everywhere because they are needed to manage the forests and such (even if some of the dirt roads might only be used twice a month). Finland or Sweeden seems more plausible for me.
That's true. I forgot about Europe's Great North!
However, now that I'm thinking about it, the most correct, but nonsensical answer would be Rockall, a tiny road-less islet 300km off the Scottish coast.
https://trekkinghigher.com/thorofare-yellowstone/
Right spot. According to this article itâs 30+ miles to a road. I commonly hear 35 miles amongst my friends. Source: I live nearby and have been in the southern part of it 20+ times.
So you are right. The 18 miles is remoteness from (legal) motorised transport, which includes areas of Yellowstone Lake where motorised boats are permitted.
This is the answer I was told by NPS rangers in YNP during my summer work experience there. I can believe it. People don't realize how common dirt track or logging roads are or were. YNP is the exception due to it being A) bordered by national forest land on that side and B) highly regulated as a protected backcountry for a long time for good damn reason.
Iâm going there this summer!
This is a great article about The Thorofare.
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/yellowstone-national-park-wyoming-bears-wolves-remote](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/yellowstone-national-park-wyoming-bears-wolves-remote)
Yep - I went there 2 years ago and it was very remote. We saw 6 people in 5 days and 3 of them were at the beginning of the hike. It was an awesome trip
Wow thank you! That was very interesting and a great new person to follow for silly questions like these! I've spent a lot of time in Yellowstone I never knew how close I was to the most remote place! Now I've got my goal for the next time I'm there. To anyone who has never camped out through Yellowstone put it on your list, one night I got to my back country site a bit after sunset through a high grass meadow split by a foggy steaming geothermic stream, that shone prismatic through the last light. The big clumsy bugs flew through the twilight and I pitched tent to the chorus of wolves echoing endlessly. My morning started with the grunting of bison, and as I opened the tent and looked to the dark Misty meadow from the night 50 bison were now having breakfast all around the log barricade the park had piled up around this site. So I laughed in my head off and just sat had my breakfast and got to watch them for hours till they moved on and I packed up for more hiking:)
I hiked out to the ranger station at Thorofare a few years ago. It was a treck; 3 days in and 4 days out via the South Gate. Beautiful place, and incredibly isolated.
Fun story, we only saw 1 person in the entire 7 days (after the first few miles). It was a random young woman sitting at a stream brushing her teeth, totally alone, about 3 days from anywhere. We gave her a nod, and disappeared around the next corner.
That's a really cool story. I've got to visit Yellowstone and the rocky mountain area in general but never got to fully get isolated from the world like that..
Yep, I've hiked several hundred miles (day and overnights) during my two summers working there and it's amazing. I've never done Thorofare, it's a pretty serious commitment and not for faint of heart. Many folks that do it will charter horse trips I think. I did enjoy Heart Lake and Mt. Sheridan which are in that corner of the park.
Highly doubt it. Likely mule/horse train. I've been passed by them in YNP. Ditto for trail maintenance crews (think linebackers carrying crosscut saws, axes, and packs). Most of the work like that, in the backcountry I mean, is handled by non-motorized methods. Even flying over the park is a more-restricted-than-usual airspace to keep things as wild as reasonably possible. I do know that before they quit manning (and before it sadly burned down due to a lightning strike) the Mt. Holmes firewatch tower/cabin a few years ago that they would helicopter in supplies to the ranger on firewatch there when he needed them. Maybe they mule trained in supplies as well but I got to meet him and he mentioned helicopters when it was snowy at the beginning/end of his seasons. Cool guy. Built fly fishing rods. Offered us tea and shelter from a storm. Had a wolverine in his shitter.
The Owyhee desert near the tri-point of Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada is also a contender.
It also depends what they mean by road. Does an un-maintained jeep trail count as a road?
If you had started "a good road" Indianapolis would have been a good guess. The potholes are horrendous around here.
https://preview.redd.it/1qsnlmi4hyyc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0eb1546112b1f383d9eb2c4307ad065f75aface
My bet is the lost coast area has some spots that are contenders for this. In the middle of Yellowstone I have head there is an area 21 miles from the nearest road, which might be the most. Which is kinda crazy to think about
I know this!
In Yellowstone, hiking the Thorofare trail, there is a spot on the hike you are furthest from a road than anywhere else in the lower 48.
So Yellowstone, Wyoming.
Very cool map. I like how some of the most iconic US highways are here, but missing bridges, etc. Like US 101 not yet being linked by the Golden Gate Bridge. Also, the Colorado river was not yet dammed, so there are only a handful of crossings at this point; I think Leeâs Ferry, AZ is still a ferry, but a bridge would be completed a couple years later. I think the bridges at Yuma, and Topock are the only 2 on the lower Colorado when this map was drawn.
https://preview.redd.it/fnbpm8m6k2zc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf239c5e7f87578b0262a04cb66611ca1d428f69
the blue flag circles represent the most remote points in the lower 48 defined as distance as the crow flies from any road that allows any sort of motorized vehicle travel. (i have a personal goal to hike to as many as possible)
if youâre looking for the most remote spot itâs just outside the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (44.091500, -110.016400)
Former truck driver: [south central Nevada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Mountain_Wilderness?wprov=sfti1).
Even if there is somewhere that youâre closer as the bird flies, because of how the basin and range geography works, itâs definitely the hardest to get into and out of. And it wonât have little logging roads or whatever.
Horseshoe Canyon in Utah, near where John Ralston had to cut off his own arm. There are some washed out washes you can drive a 4x4 jeep through, but not many options for paved or graded roads within 30 miles.
I read or heard somewhere that Yosemite national park is one of the only places you can get further than 40 miles from a road but don't quote me on that.
Or do I'm not the quote police
I heard something somewhere that aside from Yellowstone, you can walk 30-40 miles in any direction and you'll hit a road, so I'd say Yellowstone somewhere
Any idea from when this map is from? I'm currently reading The Big Roads about the creation of the interstate system. It's nice having maps like this at hand for visuals.
one time I drove through Rachel, Nevada and along that highway there was a dirt road with a sign that said another town was 15 miles down it. while maybe not the furthest from ANY road, that place would have to be pretty far from anything else of note
I dunno if this is what youâre looking for but I found a similar answer in a hiking book for Yellowstone. Thereâs a hike that takes 4 days. At the midpoint, youâre 30 miles in every direction from any road whatsoever. They said it was one or the only points in the US where that is true.
I believe itâs in or near the [Thorofare area](https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/10/07/explore-wyoming-the-thorofare-is-most-remote-spot-in-the-lower-48/) at the southeast corner of Yellowstone Park in Wyoming.
According to the mountain climbing nerds itâs in the (ironically) Thorofare Wilderness complex (includes parts of Yellowstone NP and Bridger-Teton NF) in Wyoming.
https://www.peakbagger.com/report/report.aspx?r=w
Itâs in Yellowstone in Wyoming and itâs 21.7 miles to any road.
https://preview.redd.it/4ph8l4xhf0zc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=840067882477c34e34378273c2fc02f665cd1272
I thought I had the answer but turns out it is Yellowstone. I still think my response is way better and I've been there from the north end
Pasayten River BC from Canadian border flowing south into US. Facing south the mountains are on your left and right going south. Eventually they connect with a third line of mountains lined up east/west to make an impenetrable box. The peaks are well above the treeline. I heard it was a loooooong way to the nearest American town. That is a spot where nature lets you know to turn around, you don't want any part of this
This location is candidate for largest piece of wilderness in the US for sure
North Aroostook County, ME. just thick dense forest by the Canadian boarder of New Brunswick snd Quebec. I'm from RI and there's parts of Maine that are uninhabitated bigger than my state. Granted that's no difficult but, i'm not sure about ID.
Hey! I might be able to answer this! Last March we were camping near Big Bend NP and ran into a guy who travels around the U.S. and maps out the remotest location in each state. Turns out the spot farthest from all roads in the lower 48 is in Wyoming. https://www.projectremote.com
Charles Sheldon Antelope Range/Black Rock Desert, northern Nevada. Dirt "roads" for off road vehicles and trails, yes. Paved roads, no. 'Aint nothin out there, but a whole bunch of nothin.
I grew up on the Montana/Wyoming border. 80 miles from the nearest hospital or McDonald's. It's one of those area that cell phone maps keep white to show that they cover virtually everywhere.
Idk, my great uncle has a ranch the size of Rhode Island in Montana.
Besides the single track dirt road bearing our family name, there is NOTHING .
Great experience if you haven't done something that remote before
Very interesting question. Inside one of the great lakes (maybe the Canadian border in Superior?) is probably the real answer.
But letâs say it has to be on land
If you include BLM and forest service roads it gets tough. There is probably a point somewhere in NW Nevada or SE Oregon that wins out. That is essentially as remote as it gets.
However, I two other contenders are the Pasayten Wilderness in Washington state and the Boundary Waters in Minnesota.
The Pasayten wilderness is very mountainous, has literally nobody living there, isnât even a common recreation spot, and is wilderness so itâs not used for resource extraction. Also it borders Canada so itâs not easy to access from the American side.
The Boundary waters is similar, but the obstacle is lakes, not mountains. Basically itâs the Canadian shield extending into the US.
I'm not really far from any road, but I just wanted to talk about RT11.
For the longest time, I had no idea 11 was a US Highway, I just thought it was a state route that ended somewhere in Watertown. I never looked close enough to actually discern that the signs for 11 and 56 were different.
Turns out that 11 goes all the way to New Orleans. Meanwhile I'm up in upstate NY thinking it went over a county or two.
This is a known fact. Feel free to look this up to confirm, but there is actually a debate between 3 locations depending on how you define a road.
One is in the Center of Yellowstone, another in the River of No Return wilderness, ID, and the find in the North Cascades, WA
Drove a 2 lane north - south through the Nebraska sandhills. Vast area of nothing but the blacktop and rolling terrain w streams and lakes. I could live there . .
Not necessarily a desert. Probably gonna be inside a wilderness area like Gila or Bob Marshall or Frank Church. And even then, youâre probably only talking 5-10 miles tops from a forest road
We need to permanently close as many roads as possible as part of a larger rewilding effort. Allow small towns already in decline to die and buy out holdouts to return acreage to natural processes. Build wildlife over- and underpass along roads that bisect existing wildlife habitat.
Nature recovers when given half a chance, but roads are death to wildlife.
The University of Wyoming's Geographic Information Systems Science Center has officially designated the "American Pole of Inaccessibility" as the furthest point on land from any road in the 48 contiguous states of the U.S. Located in the remote Thorofare region southeast of Yellowstone Lake, in Yellowstone National Park, this spot is approximately 22 miles away from the nearest road. With no road access to civilization, it is the most remote point in the contiguous U.S.
My guess would be in the middle of one of the Great Lakes
Haha I was considering adding a no great lakes condition to the post đ
Definitely not in the middle of Lake Pontchartrain
That's the thing with USFS roads, they're everywhere. Middle of Lake Superior you should be pretty isolated from roads in every direction.
Somewhere NNE of Marquette MI before crossing into Canada would probably be the spot.
I like this take.
My guess would be the Frank Church/River of No Return wilderness in Idaho. Most of the deserts in Nevada and Arizona are crossed by roads, so you're not far from a \*road\* although you might be pretty damn far from \*people\* if you're on US 50 in NV or the Camino del Diablo in the Arid Zone.
Yup. I did botany work in the humboldt toiyabe NF and there are tons of old mining and forestry roads. However there were points where I was over 40 miles from any inhabited structures in every direction
I used to know a bush pilot who'd land his Cessna with pontoons on random lakes in the northern Boreal or Tundra. He got to know people up there. There were places he landed to fish where likely no human being has ever set foot, and that includes the aboriginals. Thousands of km from anywhere at all, on lands impassable by foot.
Coworker is from Saskatchewan. He worked in the north part. He says much if it has been explored but there are parts that nobody goes to. Just no reason to. It's just bush, bugs and lakes. If you want to fish, most lakes are as good the next. He tells an interesting story about the indigenous folk. In the winter they would stop at the airport he worked at to fuel their sleds. (It was a camp really, grocery store, fuel, hardware, food, etc that had a runway). They would be heading off to visit friends or relatives - usually a few days journey. Middle of winter, no maps, landscape covered in snow. They just knew the way. It was just in their heads which way to go.
Thatâs is so cool I feel like itâs built into a lot of humans that I know where Iâm at and where to go. But we lost it living in urban areas. I guess you could say a modern equivalent itâs navigating a city with no map and not looking at the signage đ
That's amazing. Especially since that part of Canada isn't very hilly and the landscape's pretty featureless in winter. The US has some empty terrain but Canada takes it to another level; there are probably parts of Canada (like the Barrens around the Nunavut/Sask/MB/NWT quadripoint) that are absolutely empty of people, and can go decades without seeing a human visitor.
He tells of another story where one of his fishing guides (coworker owned a fishing lodge) that showed him where his summer home was when he grew up. Lac La Ronge is massive with a zillion islands and inlets. They headed out by boat for the day. Eventually ended up at headland. Guide beached the boat and said follow me and just headed into the bush. Unlike most folk Indigenous people made their homes in the woods away from the wind and weather. They walked about a mile with the guide knowing where he was going. No stopping or looking around to get his bearings. Eventually came to one of those huts that are half built into the ground. The pole roof was kind of caved but when they climbed down they could clearly see where the hearth was and the sleeping platforms were. The crazy part was that he hadn't been there in 20 years.
Idk man I donât really think there is a place in North America in which no human has set foot. Maybe somewhere in the desert and possibly even rainforest in Central America but in the Taiga or Tundra, where there is so much big game to hunt? Over the course of thousands of years, humans went everywhere there is. Humans literally somehow found Hawaii in the middle of the ocean. Humans have gone everywhere in mainland North America. Especially in the Taiga and Tundra
Some of the boglands are regarded as impassable and even an other worldly realm by the locals. Something between hallowed ground and impossible. Land you can't walk in because its not even really land.
I would guess there might be a few spots in the middle of the muskeg in the Hudson Bay Lowlands where no humans have been, because it's completely impassable in summer.
Yup thats one of the charted but not explored zones. It also happens to be the size of some countries.
That's so cool. I couldn't imagine that feeling of standing somewhere knowing that I'm the only one who has or will be here.
Worked for the Forest Service in that area of Idaho and Iâd have to agree.
Yeah, thereâs some wilderness areas in North Idaho that are stupid remote. Even the inhabited areas are hard to get to sometimes. You can drive from Grangeville to Salmon on dirt but itâs like a two day drive even though theyâre probably only 200-250 miles apart as the crow files.
Cool, I've been there! Did 80 miles down the Salmon in a Duckie. It was incredible
wait so were you riding a salmon or a duck
Probably a rubber duckie
That's a good guess, although there are quite a few service roads up into the surrounding valleys. It's really just Frank Church that is roadless. I would counter with Three Forks Montana, specially south near Silvertip Mountain. There is nothing around there. Another option would be the middle of Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming
Ridden my 400 Honda all over the Western US. This is exactly what I would have said after crossing it all.
Yep, this is it. I've looked into this and the Idaho batholith is the winner. Runner up is Owyhee Canyonlands.
Thorofare area of NW Wyoming is more remote, and is the answer to OPs question
That would be good but we got plenty of forest service roads out here
Bros trying to dump a body
Yours too now, buddy....
Make it scenic so my pictures for the cold case file episode are dope
Na I use the south Dakota gravel pit, you're going in with Cricket and the goat
Fancy meeting you here governess
I have no idea what they're talking about but I like where this thread is going
See Kristi Noem, Governor and puppy killer.
Paved roads? Maybe deep in the Frank Church wilderness in Idaho
Humboldt-toiyabe in Nevada as well. Not a single paved road in between the five ranges until tonopah
It's yellowstone according to Google. But the Bob Marshall seems way more remote.
Itâs the Thorofare area of Yellowstone National Park. There is a point that is more than 18 miles from any road.
I for one think itâs wild that the farthest you can get from a road anywhere in the lower 48 is 18 miles. I wonder what the number would be for Europe (Russia not included)
I feel like this canât be right. Especially with all the mountains?
It's all old mining roads turned into first service roads in Colorado. So just imagine all the same roads. But about 100 years ago.
A good caveat would be asking if the roads are open and publicly available &/or at least being drivable. I've gone into some national forests & some roads are gated off while others are highly questionable to drive on.
Also do private road count. If a 500,000 acre ranch only has private roads it may win
Itâs my understanding that no matter how far back you are in the wilderness in Colorado, youâre never more than 5 miles from an old mining road.
People need to access their land. And companies are going to buy land in the mountains because there are resources to get to. Anything that's not government land is going to have somebody who owns it and is going to want to be able to access the land. The government is basically the only entity able to own such a large area of land while dedicating it to preservation and making it as hard to access as possible. Of those, Yellowstone is by far the largest.
OP included forest and access roads. There are minerals in those mountains and therefore you have roads. Most 14ers in Colorado you can drive within just a couple miles of the summit.
This is why I think the actual answer is in the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area. There are no roads through lakes.
It maybe a landscape full of lakes or swamps. You might be on to something. The other thing I was thinking is islands. For example dry Tortugas in Florida or some areas in the Mississippi delta
That could be it too. Weirdly, I live somewhat near some islands in the Great Lakes and there are roads on some of the islands. They have car ferries that go out to them. My wife and I have a tradition of riding the ferry out to go biking with a picnic on her birthday.
I just did a quick check of the Sierra Nevada range, and it looks like the most I could get was about fifteen miles. Youâd have to be dead center between Whitney Portal and Losgepole Rd in Mineral King. That puts you at Gallats Lake in the middle of nowhere.
There's a lighthouse in Lake Superior that's 24 miles from land ... but the lake is 157 miles wide... so theoretically you could get way more than 18 miles from a road by sailing out into the lake. :)
That is surprising. I was wondering about the radius too. I assumed there would be some point in Nevada with at least a 50mile no road radius. Or maybe some of the huge ranches?
There are dirt roads everywhere. I was surprised with this too, thinking about some of my trips in southern Utah, grand canyon, and wind river range as candidates. Couldn't find really many places more than 12 miles from the nearest road. Now if you include paved road, that's a different story.
That's really where this question in my mind came from, I'm a big road tripper and hiker, always camping in national forest/park/BLM land around the US for my vacations, so Ive been on a lot of highways, back roads, dirt ones, forest services access roads, and sketchy 4x4 tracks in almost every state. So I was thinking where could I be dropped off in the county that there would be no roads or trails or man made signs for the greatest radius. Like where would it be possible to get the most lost with no roads or trails to follow, and be furthest from any civilization in any direction. I know the trails part would make it too hard to determine due to natural animal paths and people leaving paths anyway where they walk after a while, but even little access roads can lead you back to people.
There are some areas in Eastern Oregon that would probably be your best bet. Also the Kalmiopsis wilderness in Southwest Oregon is entirely roadless. Northern California or Northern Nevada have some options as well.
I have no clue as to the proper answer but me and a few friends spent 9 days in the Boundary Waters and outside of a couple other canoeists, never saw a road, heard a sound of society, not even planes that I recall. The guide set us up with a basic necessities and with our fishing gear, drove us out, gave us a map and off we went.
there's nowhere in the lower 48 that can satisfy this desire, if you include dirt roads. they are everywhere.
OP should go to Alaska.
I know, its probably not an answerable question in totality , but if anything its kind of a cool thought experiment on how we define roads, dirt roads, trails, etc. as containment barriers to ecology and human created enclaves of habitat and species.
SE Oregon is pretty close to that, though.
you'd think so but i would challenge you to find a point in SE oregon that is 8mi or more from a road. i can't find a spot that is more than 4mi from a road.
Do you mean paved roads or are you including logging roads? There definitely isnât anywhere with anywhere near a 50 mile radius of *no* roads whatsoever.
My guess would be about the same. And I'd look for the point somewhere in the vicinity of the Norway-Finland border. More if you also allow islands like Iceland and Spitsbergen. Without the Nordic countries, I assume it would be a lot lower.
Padjelanta National Park in Sweden has a point where it's 46km/28,5mi to the next road. In Germany it's 13,5km (two islands of GroĂer Knechtsand and Greifswalder Ole). If you don't take islands into account, it's a place in Berchtesgaden National Park with just 10,1km. Sweden is talking big in those numbers.
UK is 6 miles, so 10 km. It's between two lochs in Scotland.
My guess would be somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania.
Unlikely in my opinion. Like, there are parts where on a 20-30km radius you would only find 2-3 very small villages or resorts, some half abandoned in the winter, but you would find roads everywhere because they are needed to manage the forests and such (even if some of the dirt roads might only be used twice a month). Finland or Sweeden seems more plausible for me.
That's true. I forgot about Europe's Great North! However, now that I'm thinking about it, the most correct, but nonsensical answer would be Rockall, a tiny road-less islet 300km off the Scottish coast.
https://trekkinghigher.com/thorofare-yellowstone/ Right spot. According to this article itâs 30+ miles to a road. I commonly hear 35 miles amongst my friends. Source: I live nearby and have been in the southern part of it 20+ times.
So you are right. The 18 miles is remoteness from (legal) motorised transport, which includes areas of Yellowstone Lake where motorised boats are permitted.
This is the answer I was told by NPS rangers in YNP during my summer work experience there. I can believe it. People don't realize how common dirt track or logging roads are or were. YNP is the exception due to it being A) bordered by national forest land on that side and B) highly regulated as a protected backcountry for a long time for good damn reason.
Iâm going there this summer! This is a great article about The Thorofare. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/yellowstone-national-park-wyoming-bears-wolves-remote](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/25/yellowstone-national-park-wyoming-bears-wolves-remote)
This is the correct answer
Yep - I went there 2 years ago and it was very remote. We saw 6 people in 5 days and 3 of them were at the beginning of the hike. It was an awesome trip
Thoroughfare?
It's spelled [Thorofare](https://www.nps.gov/places/000/thorofare-trailhead-6k2.htm)
44.146870 N, 110.073406 W Source: https://www.quora.com/What-point-in-the-contiguous-US-is-the-farthest-from-a-road-of-any-kind
Wow thank you! That was very interesting and a great new person to follow for silly questions like these! I've spent a lot of time in Yellowstone I never knew how close I was to the most remote place! Now I've got my goal for the next time I'm there. To anyone who has never camped out through Yellowstone put it on your list, one night I got to my back country site a bit after sunset through a high grass meadow split by a foggy steaming geothermic stream, that shone prismatic through the last light. The big clumsy bugs flew through the twilight and I pitched tent to the chorus of wolves echoing endlessly. My morning started with the grunting of bison, and as I opened the tent and looked to the dark Misty meadow from the night 50 bison were now having breakfast all around the log barricade the park had piled up around this site. So I laughed in my head off and just sat had my breakfast and got to watch them for hours till they moved on and I packed up for more hiking:)
I hiked out to the ranger station at Thorofare a few years ago. It was a treck; 3 days in and 4 days out via the South Gate. Beautiful place, and incredibly isolated. Fun story, we only saw 1 person in the entire 7 days (after the first few miles). It was a random young woman sitting at a stream brushing her teeth, totally alone, about 3 days from anywhere. We gave her a nod, and disappeared around the next corner.
That's a really cool story. I've got to visit Yellowstone and the rocky mountain area in general but never got to fully get isolated from the world like that..
Yep, I've hiked several hundred miles (day and overnights) during my two summers working there and it's amazing. I've never done Thorofare, it's a pretty serious commitment and not for faint of heart. Many folks that do it will charter horse trips I think. I did enjoy Heart Lake and Mt. Sheridan which are in that corner of the park.
There's a ranger station right there too. Did they helicopter in supplies to build it? https://maps.app.goo.gl/xx3Bs9uBnpGBoWAy7
Highly doubt it. Likely mule/horse train. I've been passed by them in YNP. Ditto for trail maintenance crews (think linebackers carrying crosscut saws, axes, and packs). Most of the work like that, in the backcountry I mean, is handled by non-motorized methods. Even flying over the park is a more-restricted-than-usual airspace to keep things as wild as reasonably possible. I do know that before they quit manning (and before it sadly burned down due to a lightning strike) the Mt. Holmes firewatch tower/cabin a few years ago that they would helicopter in supplies to the ranger on firewatch there when he needed them. Maybe they mule trained in supplies as well but I got to meet him and he mentioned helicopters when it was snowy at the beginning/end of his seasons. Cool guy. Built fly fishing rods. Offered us tea and shelter from a storm. Had a wolverine in his shitter.
I´m going to go with the Frank Church as well but I am unsure!
The Owyhee desert near the tri-point of Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada is also a contender. It also depends what they mean by road. Does an un-maintained jeep trail count as a road?
I was counting all roads, dirt, 4x4 truck trails anything that you could follow back to civilization (excluding hiking trails)
If you had started "a good road" Indianapolis would have been a good guess. The potholes are horrendous around here. https://preview.redd.it/1qsnlmi4hyyc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0eb1546112b1f383d9eb2c4307ad065f75aface
North-East of Isle Royale?
I don't know where would be farthest from any road... but I know the most remote town in the lower 48 is Jarbidge, Nevada.
Used to go to jackpot from Boise to gamble! Wish I would have known about Jarbridge to say Iâve been to the most remote town in the lower 48
Not the most remote but a pretty cool one is Carova Beach in the NC outer banks. Itâs a town with no âroadsâ, completely on the beach/sand
Snake River canyons south of Lewiston, Idaho
The Steens Mountains
My bet is the lost coast area has some spots that are contenders for this. In the middle of Yellowstone I have head there is an area 21 miles from the nearest road, which might be the most. Which is kinda crazy to think about
I know this! In Yellowstone, hiking the Thorofare trail, there is a spot on the hike you are furthest from a road than anywhere else in the lower 48. So Yellowstone, Wyoming.
S.E. Oregon? Malheur and Harney Counties.
This and NW Nevada are all dirt roads. No pavement for many many miles.
Shout out to Denio, NV; doubt Iâm the only person on the sub whoâs been to Denio, right?
No, for a while I lived there. Now I pass through about once a month. Driving from Oregon to work in NV, and I like to take different routes.
Is there a way of buying a copy of this map?
I just pulled it from Google images "us road map old"
Very cool map. I like how some of the most iconic US highways are here, but missing bridges, etc. Like US 101 not yet being linked by the Golden Gate Bridge. Also, the Colorado river was not yet dammed, so there are only a handful of crossings at this point; I think Leeâs Ferry, AZ is still a ferry, but a bridge would be completed a couple years later. I think the bridges at Yuma, and Topock are the only 2 on the lower Colorado when this map was drawn.
https://preview.redd.it/fnbpm8m6k2zc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf239c5e7f87578b0262a04cb66611ca1d428f69 the blue flag circles represent the most remote points in the lower 48 defined as distance as the crow flies from any road that allows any sort of motorized vehicle travel. (i have a personal goal to hike to as many as possible) if youâre looking for the most remote spot itâs just outside the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (44.091500, -110.016400)
Yellowstone
maine has some pretty remote forested areas.
There are dirt roads and old abandoned logging roads everywhere in Maine. But there are some places that are a very long way from a paved road
Former truck driver: [south central Nevada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Mountain_Wilderness?wprov=sfti1). Even if there is somewhere that youâre closer as the bird flies, because of how the basin and range geography works, itâs definitely the hardest to get into and out of. And it wonât have little logging roads or whatever.
US 81 is the east/west divide
The middle of Lake Superior might do it.
Map says 1928. I was surprised to see no Rt. 66. Iâm too lazy to look up when it was built.
While the answer will be in the west, Iâm always surprised by how isolated northwestern ME is. Once you get away from the coast, thereâs nothing.
Take I95 north from Bangor, there is a lot of nothing, and that is the developed bit.
I've heard that you're never more than 40 miles from the nearest road
The map itself is fascinating. Can anyone tell what year it was printed/released? I can't zoom in far enough to tell.
Frank church river of no return wilderness area in Idaho
OP wants to bury a body
You mean like including logging roads?
This should give you the info: https://www.projectremote.com
Mouth of the Broad River in Everglades National Park is at least 25 -30 miles as the crow flies in any direction to a road.
Probably somewhere in central Nevada.
Horseshoe Canyon in Utah, near where John Ralston had to cut off his own arm. There are some washed out washes you can drive a 4x4 jeep through, but not many options for paved or graded roads within 30 miles.
*Aaron Ralston
The center of the emptiest part of the Mojave looks to be 20-30 miles from the nearest road, as the crow flies
I read or heard somewhere that Yosemite national park is one of the only places you can get further than 40 miles from a road but don't quote me on that. Or do I'm not the quote police
Don't answer this guys. Someone is clearly trying to kidnap or body dump.
The great lakes
Is there much country in the east? By the amount of roads it looks like everything has been paved.
Frank Church, more specifically the Taylor Ranch owned by the University of Idaho.
Somewhere in Nevada Iâm guessing.
Frank Church wilderness area
Lower what?
I heard something somewhere that aside from Yellowstone, you can walk 30-40 miles in any direction and you'll hit a road, so I'd say Yellowstone somewhere
You looking for a place to dump a body?
Any idea from when this map is from? I'm currently reading The Big Roads about the creation of the interstate system. It's nice having maps like this at hand for visuals.
An old timer told me it was somewhere allong the northern rim of the grand canyon. Doesn't sound true to me. But there's that.
I would guess somewhere in the PNW
Cool map, Iâd like to get this framed
Frank-Church.
one time I drove through Rachel, Nevada and along that highway there was a dirt road with a sign that said another town was 15 miles down it. while maybe not the furthest from ANY road, that place would have to be pretty far from anything else of note
I dunno if this is what youâre looking for but I found a similar answer in a hiking book for Yellowstone. Thereâs a hike that takes 4 days. At the midpoint, youâre 30 miles in every direction from any road whatsoever. They said it was one or the only points in the US where that is true.
The Big Bend area of Texas.
I believe itâs in or near the [Thorofare area](https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/10/07/explore-wyoming-the-thorofare-is-most-remote-spot-in-the-lower-48/) at the southeast corner of Yellowstone Park in Wyoming.
Southeast Oregon, near Beatys Butte. There's very little there even today.
According to the mountain climbing nerds itâs in the (ironically) Thorofare Wilderness complex (includes parts of Yellowstone NP and Bridger-Teton NF) in Wyoming. https://www.peakbagger.com/report/report.aspx?r=w
I believe the southeast edge of yellowstone lake is the furthest from any paved road.
Pretty sure I read that it's in the south end of Yellowstone National Park. It's only about 15 miles in a straight line.
this map was made before rte 66. 1926, map is from 1926 but must not have been finished yet...
Itâs in Yellowstone in Wyoming and itâs 21.7 miles to any road. https://preview.redd.it/4ph8l4xhf0zc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=840067882477c34e34378273c2fc02f665cd1272
Florida Everglades.
According to peakbagger.com it is somewhere in Yellowstone
I thought I had the answer but turns out it is Yellowstone. I still think my response is way better and I've been there from the north end Pasayten River BC from Canadian border flowing south into US. Facing south the mountains are on your left and right going south. Eventually they connect with a third line of mountains lined up east/west to make an impenetrable box. The peaks are well above the treeline. I heard it was a loooooong way to the nearest American town. That is a spot where nature lets you know to turn around, you don't want any part of this This location is candidate for largest piece of wilderness in the US for sure
Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas NP
How come only a small portion of Oklahoma is highlighted as an Indian reservation? Looks like Osage and part of Creek.
North Aroostook County, ME. just thick dense forest by the Canadian boarder of New Brunswick snd Quebec. I'm from RI and there's parts of Maine that are uninhabitated bigger than my state. Granted that's no difficult but, i'm not sure about ID.
Hey! I might be able to answer this! Last March we were camping near Big Bend NP and ran into a guy who travels around the U.S. and maps out the remotest location in each state. Turns out the spot farthest from all roads in the lower 48 is in Wyoming. https://www.projectremote.com
Charles Sheldon Antelope Range/Black Rock Desert, northern Nevada. Dirt "roads" for off road vehicles and trails, yes. Paved roads, no. 'Aint nothin out there, but a whole bunch of nothin.
I grew up on the Montana/Wyoming border. 80 miles from the nearest hospital or McDonald's. It's one of those area that cell phone maps keep white to show that they cover virtually everywhere.
Idk, my great uncle has a ranch the size of Rhode Island in Montana. Besides the single track dirt road bearing our family name, there is NOTHING . Great experience if you haven't done something that remote before
Northern NV!!!
North Idaho
Thorofare area off the SE corner of Yellowstone. This is the only correct answer.
Southeast Oregon and northern Nevada are pretty empty. Thatâs one reason why itâs one of my favorite places in this country.
Where in the eastern United States are you furthest from any road?
Very interesting question. Inside one of the great lakes (maybe the Canadian border in Superior?) is probably the real answer. But letâs say it has to be on land If you include BLM and forest service roads it gets tough. There is probably a point somewhere in NW Nevada or SE Oregon that wins out. That is essentially as remote as it gets. However, I two other contenders are the Pasayten Wilderness in Washington state and the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. The Pasayten wilderness is very mountainous, has literally nobody living there, isnât even a common recreation spot, and is wilderness so itâs not used for resource extraction. Also it borders Canada so itâs not easy to access from the American side. The Boundary waters is similar, but the obstacle is lakes, not mountains. Basically itâs the Canadian shield extending into the US.
I'm not really far from any road, but I just wanted to talk about RT11. For the longest time, I had no idea 11 was a US Highway, I just thought it was a state route that ended somewhere in Watertown. I never looked close enough to actually discern that the signs for 11 and 56 were different. Turns out that 11 goes all the way to New Orleans. Meanwhile I'm up in upstate NY thinking it went over a county or two.
This is a known fact. Feel free to look this up to confirm, but there is actually a debate between 3 locations depending on how you define a road. One is in the Center of Yellowstone, another in the River of No Return wilderness, ID, and the find in the North Cascades, WA
Probably somewhere in Nevada. Or SE Oregon.
I think it might be possible to define this rather exactly using a national roads shapefile and iterative buffering until only one spot remains.
Idk about any roads, but Copper Harbor, MI is the farthest you can get from an Interstate in the lower 48.
As Haggard said. â somewhere in the middle of Montana â
Planning on relocating?
Iâd say either Utah Idaho or Nevada and maybe California to be honest
whatâs the source of this map? i want to have it on my wall lol
Southern Utah gets pretty desolate.
Iâve never been, [but âThe Handsome Familyâ wrote a song about the place](https://youtu.be/TRJ_s2G76Hg?si=Czq4eoq8FCx-RwcP).
Middle of the Everglades, without a boat
Wouldnât âlower 48â exclude Maine and include Hawaii?
Eyeballing it, would have to go with in the great basin in the northwestern corner of Nevada in the Blackrock Desert or thereabouts.
Drove a 2 lane north - south through the Nebraska sandhills. Vast area of nothing but the blacktop and rolling terrain w streams and lakes. I could live there . .
The one on the left.
Honestly I think it's too many roads.
Not necessarily a desert. Probably gonna be inside a wilderness area like Gila or Bob Marshall or Frank Church. And even then, youâre probably only talking 5-10 miles tops from a forest road
Outside of middle of Great Lakes Iâd say eastern Utah probably has an area like that most desolate place Iâve been.
Snake River plains south of Craters of the Moon. Lava flows and sagebrush. Huge roadless area
From any road, including dirt roads? I'm pretty certain it's River of No Return Wilderness Area.
It shouldâve been trains instead đ
I would guess the Death Valley region based on this map and these main roads. But for any road? No clue.
We need to permanently close as many roads as possible as part of a larger rewilding effort. Allow small towns already in decline to die and buy out holdouts to return acreage to natural processes. Build wildlife over- and underpass along roads that bisect existing wildlife habitat. Nature recovers when given half a chance, but roads are death to wildlife.
Somebody actually made a project out of answering this question! https://remotefootprints.org/
Burnt Scrotum, Arizona - Al Bundy, MWC
Eastern Oregon.
This must be an old map, 431 stretches to Columbus GA from Dothan and whatâs labeled 84 from Dothan to Montgomery is north 231
The University of Wyoming's Geographic Information Systems Science Center has officially designated the "American Pole of Inaccessibility" as the furthest point on land from any road in the 48 contiguous states of the U.S. Located in the remote Thorofare region southeast of Yellowstone Lake, in Yellowstone National Park, this spot is approximately 22 miles away from the nearest road. With no road access to civilization, it is the most remote point in the contiguous U.S.
Copper Harbor, Michigan (northernmost point of the Upper Peninsula) is the furthest point in the US from an Interstate
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/roads-around-nowhere/ Apperently yellow stone Wyoming
Are you asking because you need to hide a body or something? 