Drove across Wyoming the other day on the way to Denver and I could definitely appreciate that it was the least populated state in the US (or least densely populated). Lots of open space.
For this past long weekend I snowshoed into a remote lake and stayed in (and fixed up) a beautiful abandoned cabin. Ice fishing, star and northern light photography, wildlife viewing and beautiful sunshine. Didn't see a single person, and I would have been shocked if I did.
I'm in the Yukon, Alaska is much the same.
Remember, the daylight up here is already 6am-10pm, so there is tons of daylight for activities, and lots of the cabin work can be done in the evening, when the sun is setting but it's not yet dark enough for Northern Lights photos.
Was the door rehanging due to some sort of winterizing or bear-proofing?
I suspect it was built in the '60s or '70s, likely a trappers cabin (most up here are). It was built with logs much too big to be from the Yukon though, so I think it must have been something important for them to import logs like that (likely from just down the road in Alaska). Which is confusing, because it wasn't on any important routes like you expect to find on, say, the Yukon river, or big lakes up here.
Judging from the materials, recent improvements and nails, books, clothes, stove, etc, I then suspect sometime in the 90's someone moved in for a summer and did a ton of work. New window shutters (built with screws indicating a cordless drill), new floorboards with paint, roof work, etc. etc. Also they conveniently left a bunch of brand new sheets of plywood and 2x4s out of the weather, and many thousands of nails. The only "visitors message" was from '98, written in pencil, which was conveniently left in a tin of nails for use in construction.
The door was very solid and clearly bolted and locked in many places long ago - the thing about locked doors on cabins in the Yukon is they tend to get smashed in by people, as this one had been. People up here prefer cabins be left unlocked so they can be used in emergencies in the winter (when it's -40) so 99.9% of cabins are not locked, and simply have a book that says "please use this cabin and treat it as your own - also leave a note in the guest book if you like". It's a great sense of community. So the door had been smashed in and was lying under a couple of feet of snow. The first night I was busy with everything else, so I just nailed up a sheet of plastic over the door in an attempt to make it air-tight. (I brought the plastic with me, having been told the cabin was a wreck)
After I dug out the door and got all the snow/ice off it, It was easy to line up the hinges and put a couple of big nails through to get it hanging right. It's possible it was knocked in by a bear (not common, but it happens), though I didn't see any evidence to suggest that.
Bears are awake now, but I didn't see any or any evidence of them yet this spring, and I covered ~40km on snowshoes
All in all, as you might be able to tell, it's a great sense of adventure to go to remote rivers and lakes and simply explore :) I'm working through the photos now, I'll post back here when they're online so you can see what I'm talking about.
I'd call this city just about perfect, though - it's still in Wyoming, so there's still separation between people, but it's a quick hop skip and jump to a bigger city for any events in that area.
Do you mean, they just purchased a farm? Or do you mean like the actual US Homestead Act, making a farm out of nothing?
I have visited there and it's one of the few residences I've ever been to where you can do a full 360 degree revolution while standing on their property and all you see is nature except for their small prairie home...no other buildings, power lines, or structures owned by anyone else in sight. Also, the air there is wonderful; there's a faint scent of sage all the time.
As others have noted, Alaska easily wins the least-density contest.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harney_County,_Oregon
Beautiful place in its own stark way - especially Steens Mountain. I wouldn't want to live there, though.
Wyoming has a population of ~576,000, which is clearly less than Alaska's population of ~731,000 in absolute numbers of population.
However, because Alaska is roughly 6 times larger (586,412 square miles vs 97,814), it wins by quite a bit on lowest density.
To put that number in perspective, I live on the border of Cobb County, Georgia, whose population as of 2012 is 707,442. This is one county outside the city limits of Atlanta (but not by much). While Cobb County is a metro Atlanta suburban county, it also has a large portion of semi-rural area. It blows my mind that more than an entire state's populace fits in a tiny (geographically speaking) county in a largely rural state.
You aren't adding any precision, or disambiguating. The OP said least _densely_ populated, as did I.
Just making sure we're all talking about the same thing.