The Kalaupapa peninsula on the northern side of Molokai in Hawaii housed a leper colony until 1969. Former patients still live in the area. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

This mine near Novokuznetsk in Siberia is more than 1,850 miles east of Moscow. Siberian villages attract folks who measure happiness in acres. (AP Photo/Alexei Kunash) Provincetown, Mass., is surrounded by three bodies of water on the very tip of Cape Cod. Artists and gay residents have long been attracted to the secluded resort town. (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki) The end of the line -- specifically, the 1 line, on the New York subway system. (AP Photo/Hillary Rhodes)

But what happens when you get to the end of the road? Do you turn back? Do you hunker down? Do you take a picture and resume your normal life?

Many don't. All around the world, humans have stepped as close to the edge of society as they could, marked their own place on the fringe, and let their freak flags fly.

What is it that draws certain people to the margins? Are they born as outcasts, or is there something else going on?

asap examined a few geographical outposts around the globe to find out.

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ACCEPTANCE

Some of the most extreme settlements on the U.S. mainland are different not just in landscape, but in social makeup.

Provincetown, Mass., is located on the very tip of Cape Cod, as far away as possible from the rest of the state as one can get while still standing on Massachusetts soil. It's also one of the most heavily gay communities in the United States.

Homosexuals flocked to the ocean town in the early 1900s after the town promoted itself as a resort town that was open to "artistic" people -- an attempt to rescue the place from the dwindling whaling economy.

"I think it was an aesthetic fact that Provincetown had a very unique landscape and waterscape, and its ability to capture a particular kind of light was unparalleled," said Karen Christel Krahulik, Associate Dean of the College at Brown and author of "Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort."

Artists started setting up art schools in the town, and the artistic culture attracted gay visitors.

"The allowances for creativity," Krahulik said. "That's what the arts are largely about, and I think it extended into the realm of personalities."

Key West, Fla., the southernmost tip of the continental United States, is also a gay haven, but that has just as much to do with its size as its location.

"It's always had an unusual society," said Claudia Pennington, executive director of the Key West Art & Historical Society. "You didn't get the same geographic breakup -- it was just too small -- so people were very accepting. And it was so new, no one could say, 'We were here first.'

"The gay community fit into the society because it was already accepting of different types of characters and nationalities."

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FORCED EXILE

Not all places on the margins are settled voluntarily. History is littered with stories of mainstream society forcibly banishing those who are unwanted.

In the late 1700s, England used Australia -- certainly an end of the Earth for Europeans at the time -- as a penal colony. Siberia served the same purpose for the Russian government, which established the Gulag labor camps after the development of the Trans-Siberian railway.

Travel book author James Pitkin traveled the entire railway and stopped in 23 towns while updating the "Trans-Siberian Handbook" (Trailblazer Guides). One village, Khuzhir, on an island in Lake Baikal, had just received electricity in 2005.

"Russian people, in general, are a hardy bunch," Pitkin said. "They're not bothered by physical discomfort or things that would get to more sensitive people.

"There's definite something about the vastness of space. It attracts a certain kind of person."

A different sort of forced settlement occurred in Hawaii, where lepers were banished to the island of Molokai -- to the northern coastline of what is now Kalaupapa, the site of the world's highest sea cliffs. Those thought to be contagious where sent to the cliffs to live in an island prison, so they couldn't infect the rest of the territory.

"For more than 100 years, people were exiled there. They had no choice in the matter," said John Tayman, author of "The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai." "The law was repealed in 1969, and it was perceived that once the gates came down, they would run. But most of them stayed."

Tayman described Kalaupapa as a modern-day Brigadoon, a place lost in time.

"The residents I spoke to love the place now and feel it's their home," he said. "They feel lucky to be able to remain there. They feel safe from the rest of the world."

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WEALTH

While living in subfreezing conditions year-round is anything but natural, they can sometime burst forth with natural resources -- and prospectors are rarely far behind.

In northern Siberia, the prisoners, have given way to entrepreneurs who gladly trade warmth and sunshine for profits from the area's valuable metals.

"A lot of people are moving there from western Russia," Pitkin said. "But some are born there and have no desire to leave."

On the southern tip of South America near Cape Horn, a small number of fishing families make up the town of Puerto Toro, the southernmost settlement in the world. A gold rush brought an influx of hopefuls around the turn of the 20th century, but most left after the fever wore off.

Gerardo Lopez, a newspaper photographer in Punta Arenas -- Chile's southernmost city, near the straits of Magellan -- describes Puerto Toro as a village only in name. He said it's just a group of small, wooden houses spread on the slope of a small hill. No streets, no roads, little electricity ... but lots of small boats. And he said the residents -- no more than 100 -- make a living from fishing in the chilly waters of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

When fisherman want to visit Puerto Williams, its larger brother just miles to the west on Navarino Island, they must sail for two hours. Look to the south, and there's nothing until Antarctica.

Life on the edge, it turns out, isn't always about sports cars and energy drinks.

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Otis Hart is an asap reporter based in New York. Associated Press writer Eduardo Gallardo contributed to this report from Santiago, Chile.

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