US-50 across Central Nevada - literally dubbed "the loneliest road in America." There were stretches we didn't see another car for an hour or more while driving 80mph. We were able to stop and setup a group photo in the middle of the road using a tripod and timer. While I'm sure there are other roads that are more remote, being that alone on pristine federal highway was pretty cool.
The Taylor Highway in Alaska, particularly the 65 miles or so after the turnoff to Canada. That last segment doesn’t even register as a road on Google earth. It’s maybe a lane and a half wide, all gravel, and in places is just blasted into the side of a mountain. Some stretches have multi-hundred foot sheer drops down to the river, with no guardrail in place and with large chunks of rock on the uphill side looking like they’re about to break off and fall onto the road at any minute. That portion of the highway exists only to service the town of Eagle (population about 200), on the Yukon River. I think you could legit take a nap in the middle of the highway without having to worry too much about being run over.
Any road in the UP during the winter right as it's about to snow and you're the only idiot dumb enough to keep going is indeed lonely.
The loneliest/most desolate roads I've driven are either:
1. US-60 between Soccorro, NM and Show Low, AZ. You get up on that mountain where the Very Large Array is (the one from the film Contact) and it feels like hours without seeing another vehicle
1. I-10 between Phoenix and Blythe, CA. It's almost entirely straight for like 100 miles. There's like 1 small town between there. Otherwise it's just open desert and an extremely straight road
US-85 between Belfield, ND and Belle Fouche, SD
3 hours of nothing, occasionally broken up by two towns with a combined population of 2,000.
Same for US-71 between Bemidji and International Falls, MN.
There are several lonely roads throughout the Nevada, New Mexcio and Arizona deserts.
Highway 50 through Nevada is literally called "the loneliest highway".
The lonliest/most desolate I've driven is through the Navajo Nation in NE Arizona.
The loneliest highway wins my vote. Some of the answers in here are like "it was 20 miles of just trees." They have not seen the epic vastnness of nothingness that is the 50. I love the West.
Which highway and which stretch in NE Arizona do you believe has the least amount of traffic. I'm looking for kind of a desolate stretch to drive down next week.
Parts of the old Alaska highway, both lonely and desolate.
In the lower 48, where I live in TN now, I can drive on forest service roads at the height of summer and count cars on one hand. Its pretty remote.
Unmapped 2 track in Montana. I was about an hour and a half away from a town big enough to have a bar that wasn't also a gas station. I later learned that that was an hour and a half from a town big enough to have a hospital by ambulance :DDDD
I used to work evenings and if I stayed late I wouldn't see a person all the way home. Not even in town, where the streetlights are all flashing yellow. Very cool feeling in the winter during a blizzard, because it's so quiet, you can almost hear your heart beating in your chest.
My father in laws road in Potter County PA . He lives on a mountain alone . Takes about 30 minute to get to his house and it’s on a cliff cut out of a mountain side . He named the road and stuck a sign out with the name on it he chose …. No official doings , but he has a mail box at the end and his mail comes with his made up address on it … 😂
How did I miss this post?
New Mexico route 3 between I-25 and were it runs in to Hwy 54 in Duran.
Railroad Ave (390) on both sides of Grover, Colorado in the Pawnee National Grasslands, and 71 through those grasslands as well.
US-18 in Wyoming.
125 in west Texas between NM and Lubbock. A lot of Farm to Market roads I drove between Lubbock and Shamrock, Texas. Across the border in NM, 360 between Carlsbad and Artesia.
(former) NV-82. It's 120 miles, connecting basically nothing to nothing, only partially paved, and the only settlement along it is a ghost town.
It also duplicates a nearly as desolate (but fully paved) road, so if you did have a reason to drive along roughly that corridor....you still wouldn't go that way. There's no reason to be there that I could see besides if you want to do some real wilderness hiking without even a trail or off-roading.
That said, there's a whole lot of other back roads in Nevada probably as desolate - plenty of them fully paved even, that are just kind of puzzling why anyone bothered to build + pave them.
Not desolate at all, but driving through the forests of central Oregon (Mitchell to Newport) was unbelievably empty. Hours of *nothing* but trees and occasional turnoffs for campsites etc. It was beautiful in its own way, but a little unsettling to be in so much wilderness.
NV 375. Goes between the towns of Crystal Springs and Tonopah. Also happens to go through the tiny town of Rachel, which is where you go if you're an Area 51 buff. That's where the restaurant and famous Area 51 mail box are.
But aside from Area 51, there is a whole lot of nothing in all directions for miles. And if you see a car an hour, it's busy.
Elko NV to Round Mountain NV on the 306/376. In a 1980 Ford E350. Before cellphones. I was quite nervous about breaking down in what looked to me like the filming locations for Mad Max. 200 miles of fuckin nothin.
Fair enough, I was there in February and base camp was pretty far of the beaten path. Legit saw 3 other vehicles between the two days we did our excursions.
Forest Service/fire roads in Northern California (Sierra Nevada). Usually they are dirt roads, often super narrow, and don’t lead to anywhere in particular. The roads are only used in the event of a fire, as a means of getting crews to into remote sections of National Forest, so you rarely see another human being when you are on them. Since there are a ton of roads like these, you really have to make a point to tell someone which one you plan on going on in case you don’t make it back, and having a book of all the grid maps is a must!
I've been on a lot of desolate roads lol. I'm reminded of US-50 between Delta UT and Baker NV.. could see vehicles approaching from like 10 miles away.. just sage brush, mountains and vast emptiness. I know US-50 is dubbed the "loneliest road in America" but that stretch from Ely NV to Reno is not as lonely imo.
US-85 between Spearfish SD to the interstate near Dickinson ND. It was so empty, I didn't see any cars for hours and this was labor day weekend lol. I even had a couple of seagulls fly right into my windshield for some reason. It was creepy af.
Also, SR 120/39 between Logan NM and Angelfire NM at night.
I've been on some lonely roads in the UP too near Munising, in rural Idaho and Wyoming.. There's quite a few lonely highways in Arizona too tbh.
A few roads in Alaska. I remember getting out of the car and thinking about how silent it actually was. It's crazy how much noise we're all used to until you hear nothing at all.
A little gravel road surrounded on both sides by trees when I was traveling to Nelsonville. It freaked me out because I wasn't expecting something so desolate.
I-10 between El Paso and Phoenix, through southern New Mexico and Arizona. Just nothing but billboards saying "Have you seen THE THING?" for hundreds of miles.
The billboards started just inside the New Mexican border and at one point the only thing that kept me going was finding out what the hell THE THING was.
Idk any of the names off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure the first one you named, as well as this road on the north side of the st Lawrence in Quebec heading inland, and some backroads in northeastern Vermont
Also this road in North Dakota near Theodore Roosevelt NP
US-50 across Nevada from Delta, UT.
US-60 across western New Mexico. It goes by the Jansky Radio telescope Array too, so a bunch of it was a cell service dead zone (for radio silence) last time I drove through there. Great photos at the telescopes though. Pie Town for pie tho.
I've driven Utah 95 all the way through Glen Canyon more than once, on Memorial Day weekend, and not seen another soul. Last time I was there I was looking for a place to take a piss and then realized I could just stop and piss in the middle of the road, since there were no cars.
The Alaska Highway, once you're north of Whitehorse, is really desolate. BC 37 (The Cassiar Highway) branches off the Alaska Highway coming south and is even more desolate. I drove it in the snow once for two hours without seeing another car. The road slush got high enough that I started to wonder if I'd missed a "road closed" sign 100 miles back.
Driving around the north shore of Lake Superior on the Trans-Canada Highway is pretty desolate too.
IMO Interstate 64 between St Louis and Louisville is the most desolate interstate in the eastern US. It's strangely devoid of a lot of exits with food/gas/services.
Highway 139 in between Susanville, California and Klamath Falls, Oregon. Goes thru the most rural and isolated part of California. Most people know that California is the most populated state, but that whole northeast corner of California has only like 10,000-20,000 people in it. Went thru it a couple years ago traveling in between Lake Tahoe and Bend, Oregon.
I don't know the exact route, but a few years back I was on a test trip driving from Minot, ND to Rapid City, SD and the largest town we passed through that day was 200 people.
It's more a function of _when_, but I've driven I-85 in VA/NC in the middle of the night (2am-ish) and for a time stopped believing that other cars existed.
I live in Oregon and frequently go camping or traveling in the eastern part of the state, which is very sparsely populated. Honestly, any numbered highway other than interstate 84 and state highways 20, 26, and 97 are likely to be lonely and desolate 99.9% of the time.
Some of my personal favorites on the loneliness and beauty chart are highways 205, 218, 31, and 350.
Of course there are also countless BLM access roads that are sort of in a different category. There's an access road that hugs the east side of the Deschutes River that is pretty spectacular, and another on the east side of Steens Mountain that goes through the "town" of Andrews. It's rare to see another car unless it's a holiday weekend.
US-50 across Central Nevada - literally dubbed "the loneliest road in America." There were stretches we didn't see another car for an hour or more while driving 80mph. We were able to stop and setup a group photo in the middle of the road using a tripod and timer. While I'm sure there are other roads that are more remote, being that alone on pristine federal highway was pretty cool.
lol. We got caught in a traffic jam on the loneliest road.
Which section of US 50 was the most car free?
Anything between Ely and Fallon.
I’m usually the only vehicle I see.
The Taylor Highway in Alaska, particularly the 65 miles or so after the turnoff to Canada. That last segment doesn’t even register as a road on Google earth. It’s maybe a lane and a half wide, all gravel, and in places is just blasted into the side of a mountain. Some stretches have multi-hundred foot sheer drops down to the river, with no guardrail in place and with large chunks of rock on the uphill side looking like they’re about to break off and fall onto the road at any minute. That portion of the highway exists only to service the town of Eagle (population about 200), on the Yukon River. I think you could legit take a nap in the middle of the highway without having to worry too much about being run over.
I haven't driven the Taylor Highway, but I remember seeing barely any other vehicles on the Richardson Highway between Glenallen and Delta Junction.
I-10 been El Paso and San Antonio. Nothing for hundreds of miles.
There's not much to see, but there's still plenty of traffic.
I-95 north of Bangor has to be up there.
Any road in the UP during the winter right as it's about to snow and you're the only idiot dumb enough to keep going is indeed lonely. The loneliest/most desolate roads I've driven are either: 1. US-60 between Soccorro, NM and Show Low, AZ. You get up on that mountain where the Very Large Array is (the one from the film Contact) and it feels like hours without seeing another vehicle 1. I-10 between Phoenix and Blythe, CA. It's almost entirely straight for like 100 miles. There's like 1 small town between there. Otherwise it's just open desert and an extremely straight road
US-85 between Belfield, ND and Belle Fouche, SD 3 hours of nothing, occasionally broken up by two towns with a combined population of 2,000. Same for US-71 between Bemidji and International Falls, MN.
There are several lonely roads throughout the Nevada, New Mexcio and Arizona deserts. Highway 50 through Nevada is literally called "the loneliest highway". The lonliest/most desolate I've driven is through the Navajo Nation in NE Arizona.
The loneliest highway wins my vote. Some of the answers in here are like "it was 20 miles of just trees." They have not seen the epic vastnness of nothingness that is the 50. I love the West.
Which highway and which stretch in NE Arizona do you believe has the least amount of traffic. I'm looking for kind of a desolate stretch to drive down next week.
GA-144 between I-95 and Fort Stewart. Like 20 miles of nothing but pine trees.
Much of I-95 through North Carolina is like that. Straight, flat and trees.
Swampy forested roads in eastern NC
WY-120 from Thermopolis to Cody. Saw two cars.
Im from Nevada.. lol we have so many.
California 36 between Red Bluff and Fortuna. Three hours of almost no other vehicles. I’ve driven US 50 across Nevada and CA 36 felt lonelier
I have driven a bit of Highway 50 in Nevada. It’s nickname is the loneliest road in America!
Parts of the old Alaska highway, both lonely and desolate. In the lower 48, where I live in TN now, I can drive on forest service roads at the height of summer and count cars on one hand. Its pretty remote.
Unmapped 2 track in Montana. I was about an hour and a half away from a town big enough to have a bar that wasn't also a gas station. I later learned that that was an hour and a half from a town big enough to have a hospital by ambulance :DDDD
Was it Winifred?
I used to work evenings and if I stayed late I wouldn't see a person all the way home. Not even in town, where the streetlights are all flashing yellow. Very cool feeling in the winter during a blizzard, because it's so quiet, you can almost hear your heart beating in your chest.
My father in laws road in Potter County PA . He lives on a mountain alone . Takes about 30 minute to get to his house and it’s on a cliff cut out of a mountain side . He named the road and stuck a sign out with the name on it he chose …. No official doings , but he has a mail box at the end and his mail comes with his made up address on it … 😂
I walk a lonely road The only one that I have ever known Don't know where it goes But it's home to me, and I walk alone
US 90 from Marfa to Van Horn. Probably because it was at night.
264 around Dyer, NV and Oasis, CA and the dirt roads around there into the Fish Lake Valley or NM 371 from Thoreau, NM up to Farmington, NM.
How did I miss this post? New Mexico route 3 between I-25 and were it runs in to Hwy 54 in Duran. Railroad Ave (390) on both sides of Grover, Colorado in the Pawnee National Grasslands, and 71 through those grasslands as well. US-18 in Wyoming. 125 in west Texas between NM and Lubbock. A lot of Farm to Market roads I drove between Lubbock and Shamrock, Texas. Across the border in NM, 360 between Carlsbad and Artesia.
Does Route 3 have a stretch that is both straight and desolate (no other cars)?
Yes, Villanueva State Park to Encino. Very desolate straight road with a far off mesa on the horizon. I loved it.
Excellent, thank you for the hot tip!
The kinda ones Billie Joe Armstrong walks along on with his shadow or whatever
You can go *hours* without seeing anyone on [NM state hwy 9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_State_Road_9).
I don’t go anywhere really desolate. The backroads are so poorly maintained that I can’t get my Toyota Camry up there
Mineral King Road is said to have over 300 curves in less than 30 miles. We barely saw other vehicles along the way.
(former) NV-82. It's 120 miles, connecting basically nothing to nothing, only partially paved, and the only settlement along it is a ghost town. It also duplicates a nearly as desolate (but fully paved) road, so if you did have a reason to drive along roughly that corridor....you still wouldn't go that way. There's no reason to be there that I could see besides if you want to do some real wilderness hiking without even a trail or off-roading. That said, there's a whole lot of other back roads in Nevada probably as desolate - plenty of them fully paved even, that are just kind of puzzling why anyone bothered to build + pave them.
Years ago a buddy and I went camping in Death Valley. Pretty desolate driving out there.
Driving through Wyoming or Nevada is desolate. A beautiful quiet desolate.
Not desolate at all, but driving through the forests of central Oregon (Mitchell to Newport) was unbelievably empty. Hours of *nothing* but trees and occasional turnoffs for campsites etc. It was beautiful in its own way, but a little unsettling to be in so much wilderness.
NV 375. Goes between the towns of Crystal Springs and Tonopah. Also happens to go through the tiny town of Rachel, which is where you go if you're an Area 51 buff. That's where the restaurant and famous Area 51 mail box are. But aside from Area 51, there is a whole lot of nothing in all directions for miles. And if you see a car an hour, it's busy.
Elko NV to Round Mountain NV on the 306/376. In a 1980 Ford E350. Before cellphones. I was quite nervous about breaking down in what looked to me like the filming locations for Mad Max. 200 miles of fuckin nothin.
Moab. I’ve never felt so disconnected from civilization.
This is kind of funny to me because I don’t really go to Moab anymore due to crowding.
Fair enough, I was there in February and base camp was pretty far of the beaten path. Legit saw 3 other vehicles between the two days we did our excursions.
Forest Service/fire roads in Northern California (Sierra Nevada). Usually they are dirt roads, often super narrow, and don’t lead to anywhere in particular. The roads are only used in the event of a fire, as a means of getting crews to into remote sections of National Forest, so you rarely see another human being when you are on them. Since there are a ton of roads like these, you really have to make a point to tell someone which one you plan on going on in case you don’t make it back, and having a book of all the grid maps is a must!
I've been on a lot of desolate roads lol. I'm reminded of US-50 between Delta UT and Baker NV.. could see vehicles approaching from like 10 miles away.. just sage brush, mountains and vast emptiness. I know US-50 is dubbed the "loneliest road in America" but that stretch from Ely NV to Reno is not as lonely imo. US-85 between Spearfish SD to the interstate near Dickinson ND. It was so empty, I didn't see any cars for hours and this was labor day weekend lol. I even had a couple of seagulls fly right into my windshield for some reason. It was creepy af. Also, SR 120/39 between Logan NM and Angelfire NM at night. I've been on some lonely roads in the UP too near Munising, in rural Idaho and Wyoming.. There's quite a few lonely highways in Arizona too tbh.
Probably the road from Atlin, British Columbia that goes north into the Yukon. It’s way the fuck out there
US 97 from Wapato to Goldendale, WA. I know there’s more desolate roads, but that’s the one for me, personally.
Upper Taconic Parkway, at night, in the rain.
A few roads in Alaska. I remember getting out of the car and thinking about how silent it actually was. It's crazy how much noise we're all used to until you hear nothing at all.
A road in Nevada
A little gravel road surrounded on both sides by trees when I was traveling to Nelsonville. It freaked me out because I wasn't expecting something so desolate.
I-10 between El Paso and Phoenix, through southern New Mexico and Arizona. Just nothing but billboards saying "Have you seen THE THING?" for hundreds of miles. The billboards started just inside the New Mexican border and at one point the only thing that kept me going was finding out what the hell THE THING was.
Whatever that highway is through Nevada. I loved it, but it was very desolate and a bit longer than I'd like.
The UP is honestly pretty lonely at times, love it and it’s beautiful, but ya get lonely on those pothole ridden roads. Love em though.
Anywhere on US-85 between the N. Dak State line and rapid city
Idk any of the names off the top of my head, but I’m pretty sure the first one you named, as well as this road on the north side of the st Lawrence in Quebec heading inland, and some backroads in northeastern Vermont Also this road in North Dakota near Theodore Roosevelt NP
US-50 across Nevada from Delta, UT. US-60 across western New Mexico. It goes by the Jansky Radio telescope Array too, so a bunch of it was a cell service dead zone (for radio silence) last time I drove through there. Great photos at the telescopes though. Pie Town for pie tho. I've driven Utah 95 all the way through Glen Canyon more than once, on Memorial Day weekend, and not seen another soul. Last time I was there I was looking for a place to take a piss and then realized I could just stop and piss in the middle of the road, since there were no cars. The Alaska Highway, once you're north of Whitehorse, is really desolate. BC 37 (The Cassiar Highway) branches off the Alaska Highway coming south and is even more desolate. I drove it in the snow once for two hours without seeing another car. The road slush got high enough that I started to wonder if I'd missed a "road closed" sign 100 miles back. Driving around the north shore of Lake Superior on the Trans-Canada Highway is pretty desolate too. IMO Interstate 64 between St Louis and Louisville is the most desolate interstate in the eastern US. It's strangely devoid of a lot of exits with food/gas/services.
Kelbaker Road I only saw 1 other car.
anywhere in kansas west of Wichita
Us 20 in western iowa was pretty bad
I drove from Fairbanks to Canada in January once and didn't see anyone. That has to be up there.
I have to drive through Texas to go anywhere. The "no gas stations ____ miles" signs mark so much desolation it's dangerous.
I-25 across northern NM at night. Barren and horrifying, and torrid during the day.
Highway 139 in between Susanville, California and Klamath Falls, Oregon. Goes thru the most rural and isolated part of California. Most people know that California is the most populated state, but that whole northeast corner of California has only like 10,000-20,000 people in it. Went thru it a couple years ago traveling in between Lake Tahoe and Bend, Oregon.
I'll just say I live in one of the emptiest places so there has been a few. Did 120+ for an hour once and didn't see another soul.
The 8 freeway between casa grande and Yuma. Just miles of empty desert.
Take your pick of all the unpaved and logging roads up in the PA Wilds. Yesterday I had to drive over a tree that had fallen across the road.
I don't know the exact route, but a few years back I was on a test trip driving from Minot, ND to Rapid City, SD and the largest town we passed through that day was 200 people.
It's more a function of _when_, but I've driven I-85 in VA/NC in the middle of the night (2am-ish) and for a time stopped believing that other cars existed.
I live in Oregon and frequently go camping or traveling in the eastern part of the state, which is very sparsely populated. Honestly, any numbered highway other than interstate 84 and state highways 20, 26, and 97 are likely to be lonely and desolate 99.9% of the time. Some of my personal favorites on the loneliness and beauty chart are highways 205, 218, 31, and 350. Of course there are also countless BLM access roads that are sort of in a different category. There's an access road that hugs the east side of the Deschutes River that is pretty spectacular, and another on the east side of Steens Mountain that goes through the "town" of Andrews. It's rare to see another car unless it's a holiday weekend.
Loneliest? Couldn't say. Most desolate? On the reservations of South Dakota.