Today’s Fact: Why this Montana town is the most isolated in the U.S.

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Original photo by Rui Serra Maia/ Shutterstock Glasgow, Montana, is the most isolated town in the contiguous U.S. The American West is known for its wide open spaces, but nowhere is quite as wide open as the area around Glasgow, Montana. Crunching some numbers back in 2018 in an effort to definitively define "the middle of nowhere," The Washington Post found that a whopping 98% of Americans in the contiguous U.S. live within an hour of some kind of urban center (that is, a metropolitan area with at least 75,000 people). But Glasgow, located in the northeast corner of the state, is an estimated 4.5 hours from the nearest urban center, making it the most isolated town (with a population of 1,000 or more) in the Lower 48.  Glasgow was founded in 1887 as a railroad town, and during World War II was home to the Glasgow Army Airfield, which eventually transformed into the Glasgow Valley County Airport. After a nearby Air Force base left town in the late '60s, Glasgow's population settled around 3,000. Although it's now the most remote town on the mainland, many towns in Alaska rival Glasgow's "middle of nowhere" claim when it comes to the nation as a whole. Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, is the U.S.'s northernmost city, is only accessible by plane, and is 500 miles away from Fairbanks. In other words, Alaska takes the idea of "wide open spaces" to a whole new level.  Glasgow, Montana, was named by spinning a globe. Glasgow, Montana, was named by spinning a globe.

The farthest spot from land is called __, after a character in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas." The farthest spot from land is called __, after a character in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas." Numbers Don't Lie Estimated year when St. Kentigern established a religious community in present-day Glasgow, Scotland 550 CE Year Montana joined the Union as the 41st state 1889 Distance (in miles) of Pitcairn Island from New Zealand, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world 3,240 Population of the state of Montana according to the 2020 census 1,084,225 The object farthest from the sun in our solar system is called Farfarout. Things don't get much more isolated than the trans-Neptunian object (TNO) Farfarout — so named because it's the farthest known object in our solar system. With the technical name 2018 AG37, Farfarout takes an entire millennium to complete its orbit around the sun; it's an average of 132 astronomical units (AU) away from our host star. With one AU equaling the distance between Earth and the sun (about 93 million miles), Farfarout is true to its name. However, depending on where it is in its orbit, Farfarout can be up to 175 AU away or as close as 27 AU, which is about as near as Neptune. While astronomers found this far-flung celestial body searching for "Planet X" — an unknown, hypothesized planet somewhere beyond the orbit of Neptune (sorry, Pluto) — Farfarout puts the "dwarf" in dwarf planet, as it stretches only about 250 miles across.  You might also like 5 Alternate Country Names You Might Never Have Heard Before Nations in various corners of the globe are often known by different names for a variety of historical, cultural, or political reasons. Check out these alternate country names that you might never have encountered before.

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