--- title: "Smallest Cities in North America by Population" url: https://33travels.com/smallest-cities-in-north-america-by-population/ author: "Lena Marchetti" published: 2026-11-01 updated: 2026-11-01 place: "Geography" --- # Smallest Cities in North America by Population ## TLDR - **Smallest incorporated place in the US:** Monowi, Nebraska, with 1 resident (2010 census). It’s a village, not a city. - **Smallest in Canada:** Cockburn Island Township, Ontario, with 16 residents (2021). Greenwood, British Columbia (702) is the small place that actually carries the word “city.” - **Smallest in Mexico:** Santa Magdalena Jicotlán, Oaxaca, with 81 residents (2020). - **Smaller than all of them:** Buford, Wyoming and Alert, Nunavut both counted zero permanent residents. Neither is an incorporated city. ## Contents - [What counts as a city](#what-counts-as-a-city) - [The ranking](#the-ranking) - [The profiles](#the-profiles) - [Why places shrink to almost nothing](#why-places-shrink-to-almost-nothing) - [The smallest capital cities](#the-smallest-capital-cities) ## What counts as a city Ask for the smallest city in North America and you get a definitions problem before you get an answer. Three countries, three systems. - **United States:** states decide what a “city,” “town,” or “village” is, and the labels mean different things from one state to the next. Separately, the Census Bureau counts census-designated places (CDPs), which are statistical areas with no government at all. A place can also lose its charter and keep its name, which matters for one entry below. - **Canada:** the unit is the municipality, which can be a city, town, village, or township depending on the province. Statistics Canada rounds very small counts, so tiny places often show up as zero. - **Mexico:** the unit is the *municipio*, closer to a county than a town. The census (INEGI) counts people per municipio and per locality. So this ranking uses incorporated places where possible, flags every unincorporated exception, and gives a census year next to each number. Figures from different years aren’t comparable down to the last person, and several of these places have more or fewer residents today than their last census count. ## The ranking | Rank | Place | Country / region | Type | Population | Year | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Buford | US, Wyoming | Unincorporated ghost town | 0 | 2020 | | 1 | Alert | Canada, Nunavut | Military station, no permanent residents | 0 | 2021 | | 3 | Monowi | US, Nebraska | Incorporated village | 1 | 2010 | | 4 | Lost Springs | US, Wyoming | Incorporated town | 6 | 2020 | | 5 | Cockburn Island | Canada, Ontario | Township municipality | 16 | 2021 | | 6 | Santa Magdalena Jicotlán | Mexico, Oaxaca | Municipio | 81 | 2020 | | 7 | Gabbs | US, Nevada | Census-designated place (formerly a city) | 186 | 2020 | | 8 | Greenwood | Canada, British Columbia | City | 702 | 2021 | If you only count incorporated places with a government that still exists, Monowi is first, Lost Springs second, and Cockburn Island third. ## The profiles ![Explore the rustic charm of Bodie, a ghost town in California's high desert.](https://33travels.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/ghost-town.jpeg) ### 1. Buford, Wyoming (0) Buford sits on Interstate 80 between Laramie and Cheyenne, near the eastern approach to Sherman Hill Summit. For nearly two decades it had one resident. He left in 2012, and the 2020 census recorded zero. Its post office closed in 2004. The whole town was auctioned on April 5, 2012, with a winning bid of $900,000. It now operates as a trading post. It’s the cleanest example of a “town” that ended up as one property. ### 2. Alert, Nunavut (0) Alert is the northernmost permanently staffed settlement on Earth, about 817 km from the North Pole. Statistics Canada counted no people there in either 2016 or 2021, because nobody lives there permanently. Military and civilian staff rotate through on tours of three to six months, and the station holds roughly 55 people as of 2024. It started in 1950 as a weather station. Today it’s a signals intelligence post, which makes it a real place with a real population that the census can’t count. ### 3. Monowi, Nebraska (1) Monowi is the answer most lists give, and it holds up. The 2000 census counted two people, Rudy and Elsie Eiler. Rudy died in 2004, and the 2010 census counted one: Elsie, living in one of the village’s three housing units. She served as mayor, clerk, treasurer, and librarian, and ran the Monowi Tavern. The library holds about 5,000 books, kept in Rudy’s memory. She also issued herself a liquor license, which is the sort of paperwork you can only do when you’re the entire electorate. A catch on the 2020 numbers: the official census tables list Monowi at 2. The Census Bureau later called the second resident statistical “noise” added to protect privacy. The village still has one resident, which is why this table uses 2010. ### 4. Lost Springs, Wyoming (6) Railroad workers named Lost Springs after they couldn’t find the springs marked on their survey maps. The town incorporated in 1911 with about 200 residents, most of them working at the nearby Rosin coal mine. The mine closed around 1930 and the town drained out. In 1976, Wyoming and the US Bicentennial Commission designated it the smallest incorporated town in America. The 2020 census counted 6. In 2000 the count was disputed, with the mayor claiming four residents against the census figure of one. In 1983 the town beat a railroad in court over a planned embankment that would have cut it off from U.S. Highways 18 and 20. ### 5. Cockburn Island Township, Ontario (16) ![A serene view of a seagull on a rock in Mackinac Island's calm waters.](https://33travels.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/lake-huron.jpeg) Cockburn Island sits in Lake Huron’s North Channel, across a narrow strait from Manitoulin Island and from Michigan’s Drummond Island. The township was incorporated in 1881. Its offices are in Thessalon, on the mainland, because there’s no ferry and no bridge. You arrive by private boat, floatplane, or snowmobile in winter. The 2021 census counted 16 residents, up from 0 in 2016. Only 11 of the island’s 89 private dwellings were occupied, and the one year-round resident is a township maintenance employee. About 90 seasonal cottages fill with an estimated 200 to 300 summer visitors. The island’s population peaked near 1,000 during the Second World War, when logging was active. It dropped after the regular ferry ended in the 1960s. The 2016 zero is a [Statistics Canada](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm) rounding practice: communities under 15 people tend to be recorded as empty. Cockburn Island is the smallest municipality in Ontario, and the lowest census count we found for any municipality in Canada. ### 6. Santa Magdalena Jicotlán, Oaxaca (81) Mexico’s least populated municipio had 81 residents in the 2020 census, according to [INEGI](https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ccpv/2020/), the national statistics agency. That’s down from 93 in 2010, spread across roughly 30 homes. It’s also the smallest municipio in Oaxaca, a state with 570 of them. The count is municipal, not a “city” in any sense a US reader would use. But a place with 81 people that has its own town council is the Mexican answer to Monowi. ### 7. Gabbs, Nevada (186) ![Explore the rugged beauty of the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas.](https://33travels.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/nevada-desert.jpeg) Gabbs is the cautionary tale in this list. Many rankings still repeat its 2010 figure of 269 and call it a city. It was founded around 1941 as a company town for Basic Magnesium, Inc., and incorporated as a city on March 29, 1955. It lost that status in 2001. The 2020 census put it at 186, and the Census Bureau now lists it as a census-designated place. It still has a high school, stores, and homes. It’s also 321 miles from Las Vegas, the farthest community in the Las Vegas metropolitan statistical area, which is a lot of road to hold a city together. ### 8. Greenwood, British Columbia (702) Greenwood is the one entry here that really is a small city by name. It had 702 people in 2021, up from 665 in 2016, on about 2.4 square kilometers. A [Global News election report](https://globalnews.ca/news/9124046/bc-municipal-election-2022-greenwood-results) calls it Canada’s smallest incorporated city. British Columbia lets very small places hold the city designation, which explains why it’s here and not a village. Below it on this list, everything is a village, a township, a ghost town, or a station. ## Why places shrink to almost nothing Almost every entry above follows one of three paths. **The employer left.** Lost Springs lost its coal mine. Gabbs ran on magnesium contracts that dried up after the Second World War and again in the 1980s. Cockburn Island lost its ferry and its logging economy. Take away the one reason people live somewhere remote and the population follows. **The railroad stopped needing them.** Lost Springs was named by railroad workers, and Buford sits beside the route of the first transcontinental railroad. A post office closing, like Buford’s in 2004, usually finishes what the trains started. **The place was never meant to be a town.** Alert is a station. Cockburn Island is a cottage community with a township government attached. Their zero counts reflect a design choice, not decline. The census keeps each of these places on the books long after most people would call them cities. ## The smallest capital cities ![Serene coastal scene featuring a lone sailboat with green hills and a small town in the background.](https://33travels.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/caribbean-town.jpeg) Capitals are a separate category, since a country’s government lives there regardless of headcount. The smallest national capitals in North America are in the eastern Caribbean, where many of the [smallest countries in North America by population](https://33travels.com/smallest-countries-in-north-america-by-population/) are also found. Roseau, Dominica, had 14,725 residents at the 2011 census. Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis, is estimated at roughly 14,000 to 17,000, depending on the source and year. Both are small enough that a walk across the core takes under an hour. In the US, the smallest state capital is Montpelier, Vermont, at about 8,000 people. That’s a state seat, not a national one, and it’s roughly 40 times the size of Gabbs. Small-place figures change with every census and estimate. Check the latest counts from the [US Census Bureau](https://www.census.gov/) before quoting any of these numbers.