Buck Hill does look like a good candidate for RI - nearly a mile road-free radius. I was going to suggest the Worden Pond side of the Great Swamp (southwest of URI Kingston) until I discovered a couple of dirt roads on the hillock there that come in real close (and give access to an awful lot of clear-cutting for a wildlife reservation?? "88 acres agricultural land" - and a shooting range! Edit: technically it's a "Wildlife Management Area" and the shooting range is adjacent but legally separate).

I grew up in Scituate, RI where we have the resivour that provides the water for Providence and is protected from trespass, hiking, swimming, fishing, etc and I wandered illegally through some miles of "wilderness" so counting water its semi remote.

How about this: point furthest from any interstate, within the lower 48. Taking a "break" from studying for finals, I tried to see if I could figure this one out. There are a few possible spots, it also depends how you classify it. All these distances are "as the crow flies".

Furthest point (that I found) from any interstate lies on the US/Canadian Border in northern Montana approximately at N 48.999656, W 107.695634. About equidistant from I15 south of Sunburst MT and I94 at West Glendive, MT, at ~190 miles, give or take a mile. This is the furthest point from any interstate overall, though since it's right on an international boundary, some may think it doesn't count.

Another contender could be this point: N 47.479758, W 87.968488. 183 miles from I75 just east of Rudyard, MI.

There are many large regions lined by Interstates in the Great Plains and the West. The seemingly largest one of these areas is surrounded by I15, I5, and I80, and encompasses parts of UT, NV, and CA, yet surprisingly, the point within this area furthest from any of these interstates is in Nye County NV (N 38.137041, W 116.539078), and is only about 150 miles from I15 near Vegas.

This is all pretty rudimentary work done on Google Earth, and if somebody spent more time, I'm sure they could more accurately pinpoint the locations, but I've got to get back to studying! Finals are approaching!

Reckon far as Arizona goes, the 10,500-acre Fishhooks Wilderness is extremely remote.

It contains no established roads or trails. Like trying to find a fish hook in a hay stack..

Thanks to everyone for a REALLY fun thread. Scott, sorry to not be of help. I am technomoronman.

McCanster, not the furthest point but I've heard that for a town its size [less than a 1,000 people] Dubois, WY is farther form an interstate than any other.

In NC the most remote is 11 miles, the summit of Mt Sequoyah to the nearest road (in the GSMNP). I think there are places as remote in the the Alligator River Refuge or Dare county bombing range of eastern NC. Although there are roads many are gated and not accessed by private vehicle.

Bump for this interesting thread, lots of cool spots listed here.

I would be interested to expand the OP's question to not just U.S. states, but to international areas as well.

This may note be remote in terms of distance from roads and all that, but the upper section of Mud Creek Canyon on Mount Shasta is pretty inaccessible. I doubt many people, if anyone at all, has ventured in there. It is pretty inhospitable:

e-doc wrote:In NC the most remote is 11 miles, the summit of Mt Sequoyah to the nearest road (in the GSMNP). I think there are places as remote in the the Alligator River Refuge or Dare county bombing range of eastern NC. Although there are roads many are gated and not accessed by private vehicle.

For NC (6.2 miles) and TN (5.5 miles), here is a short discussion of remotest point:
http://tnlandforms.us/gsmnp/#remotest
The Dismal Swamp in NC is only 4.4 miles

Zombie thread eh?

nartreb wrote:Buck Hill does look like a good candidate for RI - nearly a mile road-free radius. I was going to suggest the Worden Pond side of the Great Swamp (southwest of URI Kingston) until I discovered a couple of dirt roads on the hillock there that come in real close (and give access to an awful lot of clear-cutting for a wildlife reservation?? "88 acres agricultural land" - and a shooting range! Edit: technically it's a "Wildlife Management Area" and the shooting range is adjacent but legally separate).

I can help you here.
There are islands in Narragansett Bay, you need to take a boat to. My favorite, is Dutch Island. There's a large sprawling Civil War fort complex. We've kayaked out there twice. The first time, we did a probe in our kayaking clothes. The vegetation on many islands, is incredibly dense, we got beat up. Didn't get far.

The second time, we wore hiking clothes, landed somewhere different, and got in deeper. But the fort has several levels, the vegetation is really dense, we'll need to rap down a few levels. So we'll need a rope and prussiks.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/dutch-island-jamestown

In my state (NY), we have Fort Tyler on an island between the forks of Long Island.

Googles first hit offers this.

http://www.danspapers.com/2013/06/fort- ... nto-ruins/

As it happened, Fort Tyler never fired a shot in anger at anybody. In 1902, after the Spanish-American War ended, it was “seized” by U.S. Naval forces in a war game between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy, which returned it to the U.S. Army. In 1928 it was abandoned because of rising seas, in 1938 all of Gardiner’s Point Island was declared a Bird Sanctuary by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and what remained of the fort was bombarded into ruins by U.S. Navy submarines firing torpedoes and U.S. Air Force four-engine bombers dropping bombs in training missions during the Second World War.

The sailors and airmen learned their lessons well. We won that war.

Today, Fort Tyler is called, simply, The Ruins, and it needs to be avoided by mariners at all costs. The remains of the fort are not only a danger to navigation, but it is believed there may still be unexploded ordinance in the rubble after all these years.

In fact, I've been all over it, even snorkeling some of it under the water. It's a prime seabird nesting area.

in my opinion the must remote area is northern middle west part of Nepal. They are totally out of surface transportation and wire telecommunication. to reach that place people has to trek for a week.

Perhaps the most remote spot that I've ever visited was the confluence of Goddard Creek and Disappearing Creek in Goddard Creek Canyon within Kings Canyon NP. Not counting the time spent for a couple of side trips to the tops of local mountain peaks (Goddard and Reinstein), the trip from Courtwright Reservoir via Hell-For-Sure and Reinstein Passes took about 4 days.



Downstream from this confluence, is about 4+ miles of horrendous rattlesnake infested bushwhacking to the Middle Fork of the Kings River at Simpson Meadow (about a day- a really bad day). Getting to Simpson Meadow involves either crossing the Monarch Divide from Roads End near Cedar Grove (a couple of long days for us 'normal people'), coming up the Middle Fork Canyon from near Wishon Reservoir (maybe 3 or 4 long days), or crossing the Sierra Crest from the Owens Valley (at least a few days).

When I was there, it had been about 2 days since my last human encounter and about 2 days before the next one. It was a very lonely spot, indeed.

John Duffield wrote:Zombie thread eh?

nartreb wrote:Buck Hill does look like a good candidate for RI - nearly a mile road-free radius. I was going to suggest the Worden Pond side of the Great Swamp (southwest of URI Kingston) until I discovered a couple of dirt roads on the hillock there that come in real close (and give access to an awful lot of clear-cutting for a wildlife reservation?? "88 acres agricultural land" - and a shooting range! Edit: technically it's a "Wildlife Management Area" and the shooting range is adjacent but legally separate).

I can help you here.
There are islands in Narragansett Bay, you need to take a boat to. My favorite, is Dutch Island

No part of Dutch Island is more than a mile from the nearest road (that's not counting abandoned roads within the fort complex), but further north, the Gooseberry Island archipelago offers some points that are at least a mile and a half from the nearest road (a bit more if you don't count airport runways). That's a good candidate if you're counting maritime islands.

In 2013, Penelope and I hiked the High Sierra Trail but modified the return to go over Colby Pass. When we got to the Whaleback, we were some 25 miles from the nearest trail head. I think that must be one of the most remote areas of the High Sierra.

asmrz wrote:In 2013, Penelope and I hiked the High Sierra Trail but modified the return to go over Colby Pass. When we got to the Whaleback, we were some 25 miles from the nearest trail head. I think that must be one of the most remote areas of the High Sierra.

There was a thread on Supertopo recently regarding this. Someone did some data analysis that came up with the most remote spot in CA as judged by straight-line distance from the nearest road. Turns out to be on the east side of Milestone Bowl, not very far from Colby Pass - so good intuition Alois!