Kansas has more small cities in the ‘middle of nowhere’ than Montana, report says

Ever been to the middle of nowhere?

It’s apparently in western Kansas.

According to a Washington Post analysis of a study by the University of Oxford’s Malaria Atlas Project, four of the 10 U.S. cities “where ‘nowhere’ is home” — meaning small cities farthest away (by travel time) from a metro of more than 75,000 people — are in Kansas.

They are: Oakley, Scott City, Holcomb, and Colby.

Kansas beat out Montana, which had three cities on the list.

The newspaper’s story, titled “Using the best data possible, we set out to find the middle of nowhere,” looked at small cities with a population of more than 1,000. Coming in at No. 1 was Glasgow, Mont., where it apparently takes more than four hours to get to any large city.

At No. 4 was Oakley, a city of more than 2,000 people, where it takes about 3.7 hours to get to a metro area in any direction, the report said.

Oakley is located more than four hours from Denver and about four hours from Wichita, according to driving times on Google Maps.

Rose Wessel grew up in western Kansas and has worked as Oakley’s city clerk since 2002. She said this week she hadn’t seen The Post’s report but wasn’t too surprised by the findings.

“You grow up in this part of Kansas, you get used to traveling,” Wessel said.

A Facebook page promoting tourism in the city saw The Post’s article this week and shared it on social media.

“Oakley made #4!!!,” it exclaimed.

Scott City, with a population of 3,000-plus, is listed at No. 7. Brenda Davis, the city clerk there, says she’s always lived in Kansas, and hopes The Post’s article could shine a light on the western side of the state.

According to The Post, it takes people in Scott City around three and a half hours to get to the nearest metro.

For Davis, it’s more like four hours.

“I think many people you would ask who live here would not be bothered by that (middle of nowhere) comment.... I’m sure our residents would say that they’re proud to be known from this area,” Davis said, describing the city as a desirable place to raise a family.

But is western Kansas really the “middle of nowhere”? Wessel and Davis say they don’t see it that way.

“It’s kind of sad, too. On the eastern side of the state, they consider Salina to be western Kansas. It doesn’t even reach the center of the state,” Wessel said. “We’re used to it ... we just smile and go along.”

The Post’s analysis includes cities with populations of 25,000 or more. Other cities in Kansas on the list were Lakin, Ulysses, Garden City and Dodge City.

Here’s how others responded to The Post’s analysis of the “most isolated” cities in the U.S. on social media:

The team at Oxford’s project is called the Global Map of Accessibility, which found that a little more than 80 percent of people in the world live within an hour of a city. But that statistic, as the group points out, varies by wealth in different countries.

This story was originally published February 23, 2018 at 10:21 AM with the headline "Kansas has more small cities in the ‘middle of nowhere’ than Montana, report says."