12 Most Isolated Ohio Towns — Why People Still Choose to Stay

The twelve most isolated Ohio towns, from the coal hollows where the pavement ends to a Lake Erie island that has no ferry, not in summer, not ever. Most people picture Ohio as one long grid of farm roads, never more than a few minutes from a hospital, a grocery store, or a gas pump burning at midnight. For most of the state that is exactly right. But out on Lake Erie there are islands that freeze in for four months of the year, sealed off by ice too soft to walk on and too hard to boat through, where the fastest way to an emergency room is a helicopter across open water. And down in the southern hills there are hollows where the road simply ends and the forest closes in behind you. This countdown starts at the gentle end and works its way out to the ice. The first half is coal country, the old Little Cities of Black Diamonds in Perry, Athens, and Vinton counties, where towns built for four thousand people now hold a few hundred, a mine fire has burned underground for about one hundred forty years, the smallest incorporated town in Ohio has twenty eight residents, and one settlement was erased by the woods so completely that all that is left is a cemetery and a brick tunnel you reach on foot. The second half is water. Islands where no hospital, doctor, or pharmacy exists, where prescriptions arrive by airplane, where an eighty five acre private club turns boats away, where a pickup truck once served as the ambulance, and where the school bus, for the children who live there, has wings. Number one is the place the modern world reaches last of all, and the people who winter there would sooner give up the mainland than give up home. Watch next: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcP3hRmjXN6Y Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvl5qAsaN6y5XKRcDk3cQYg?sub_confirmation=1 Could you live somewhere the ferry stops for four months a year? Tell me below. Informational only, not relocation or medical advice. Ferry, flight, and service details change. Confirm before any decision. #Ohio #LakeErie #OhioUncovered