When people talk about empty stretches of American wilderness, Alaska and the Mountain West tend to dominate the conversation. But northern Maine quietly holds a claim that deserves far more attention. As Beaver Geography explains, Northwestern Maine is, by nearly any measure, one of the most sparsely populated regions in the entire contiguous United States.
The broader northern Maine region holds just 10,500 residents spread across a vast landscape, translating to roughly 1.2 people per square mile. To put that in perspective, that density is comparable to a single city block in the most crowded part of Manhattan. When you zoom into the most remote pockets of the region, the figure drops even further to just 836 residents and 0.14 people per square mile, a number that continues to shrink.
What makes this area particularly remarkable is not just its low population, but the nature of the land itself. There are no paved roads cutting through much of it. There are no incorporated towns or cities. The Canadian border runs along largely uninhabited terrain, with the majority of the land held privately by the timber industry rather than set aside as public parkland. This is not a national forest with ranger stations and trailheads. It is working industrial forestland with very limited public infrastructure.
Wildlife fills the void left by human absence. Hunting and fishing draw visitors to the region’s many lakes and wilderness areas, and the animals largely have the run of the place.
For those who measure remoteness by true isolation from roads, services, and permanent settlement, northwestern Maine is not just the emptiest region east of the Mississippi. It genuinely rival to some of the most remote corners of the American West.
