Alan Feuer drives one of the continent’s most isolated roads over Alaska’s Brooks Range, from Livengood (population: 13) to the industrial oil camp of Deadhorse:

It was with these thoughts that I finally got to Deadhorse, which may rank as the most horrific place on planet Earth. If Stalin had built a gulag in the cargo area of Kennedy Airport, it would probably look like Deadhorse. The town, if you can call it that, is the apotheosis of petrochemical dismalness: a wasteland of oil tanks, acetylene fires, heavy-machine repair shops and spill-abatement companies that is drenched in freezing rain and pocked with muddy puddles, and where everyone I encountered wondered what in the world I was doing there at all.