While the term “small town” is certainly objective (sorry John Cougar Mellencamp), Missouri does have its fair share of towns that no one would ever classify as anything but. And it turns out, the smallest of the small is right down the road.

Missouri-demographics.com lists 779 cities in Missouri arranged in order of population. Obviously Kansas City and St. Louis are 1 and 2 on the list respectively followed by Springfield, Columbia, and Independence. Sandwiched between Farmington and Kirksville, Hannibal comes in at number 46 with a population of 17,839.

The list continues with a plethora of St. Louis County towns along with dozens of cities I’ve never heard of, each one smaller than the previous.

It isn’t until you get to number 705 on the list that populations dip into double digits. In other words, there are 75 cities in Missouri with populations of fewer than 100 people.

So what city comes in dead last? That would be the VERY small town of Cave, Missouri. It’s population? Five. Five people.

Google Maps lists Cave about an hour and a quarter south of Hannibal in Lincoln County (near Troy). According to a 2010 census, Cave had five people, three households, and two families. Wikipedia breaks this down to a population density of 5.2 inhabitants per square mile with a median age of 61.5 years.

For more information, check out the Cave, Missouri Wikipedia page (because there's not much else out there about it and a name like "Cave" isn't very conducive to Google searches.)

Cave Missouri
Google Maps
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