Want to live a truly “remote” lifestyle? By “remote,” we don’t mean working wherever there’s Wi-Fi — we mean living off the grid.
With the pandemic far from over, there’s no better time to isolate yourself. But a self-reliant lifestyle isn’t possible everywhere in America.
To help you find your remote slice of heaven, LawnStarter ranked 2022’s Best States to Live Off the Grid.
We compared all 50 states across 21 key factors — from off-grid legality and average per-acre cost of farmland to climate and crime rate.
See the five best (and five worst) states for remote living below, followed by highlights and lowlights from our analysis.
Highlights and Lowlights:
Great Plains, Great for Getting Away: Flyover states, it turns out, are indeed an ideal place to land and live off the grid. Nine of our top 10 are fully or partly in the Great Plains region of the U.S. Texas claims the No. 1 spot, while Missouri finishes in 10th place.
All of these states ranked in the top 20 of the Feasibility and Infrastructure categories — except for Missouri, which slips to No. 21 in the latter.
Self-sufficiency is critical to an off-grid lifestyle, and our ranking of the Best States to Start a Farm or Ranch shows there’s no better place to grow your own crops than in the Great Plains.Alaska, the ‘Silence Is Golden’ State: Not into small talk? America’s northernmost state will happily indulge your anti-social tendencies.
Alaska might not be the most off-grid lifestyle-friendly state at No. 42 overall, but it’s the least densely populated and the least connected by phone. Even Henry David Thoreau would have felt lonely here.
You’d have to be very intentional about running into another human in The Last Frontier — that’s what makes Alaska such a magnet for ex-convicts.Claustrophobia Coast: Bright lights plus big cities equals a very small chance of truly unplugging.
East Coast states — particularly in New England and the Mid-Atlantic — make up half of our bottom 10, owing to their collectively poor performance in Feasibility and Safety. They include Massachusetts at No. 44, New Hampshire at No. 45, New York at No. 47, and Pennsylvania at No. 48. New Jersey finishes dead last.
This should come as no surprise, considering these states are also among the 10 most densely populated states. That means close encounters with the human kind are more likely — not ideal for those seeking isolation.The full ranking and analysis can be found here: https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/studies/best-and-worst-states-for-living-off-the-grid/
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