Monowi, Nebraska: The Town With a Population of One

Monowi began like many towns on the Great Plains: with a railroad. Around 1902, a rail line was extended into northeastern Nebraska, and a small village was laid out beside it. Its name is often said to come from a Native American word for a flower. A post office opened in 1902, and in its best years, the 1930s, Monowi had about 150 people, with shops, a school and a church. Then, like much of the rural Plains, it slowly emptied. Farms consolidated, young people left for jobs elsewhere, and the post office closed in 1967. By the 1990 census, only eight people were left, and by 2000, only two: a married couple, Rudy and Elsie Eiler. Elsie had grown up on a farm just north of Monowi. She was born in 1933 and married Rudy in 1954. In 1971, the couple bought the Monowi Tavern, and they officially reopened it in 1975. When Rudy died in 2004, Elsie became the only person living in Monowi. She didn't leave. In the summer of 2004, she opened Rudy's Library in his honor, filled with about 5,000 books he had collected. And because Monowi is still an incorporated village, someone has to do its official work. Elsie serves as its mayor, clerk, treasurer and librarian. She files the paperwork needed to keep the village legally in existence. The Monowi Tavern is the heart of it all. Ranchers, travelers, local sheriffs and curious tourists stop in for burgers and conversation. In 2021, the sheriffs of Knox and Boyd counties threw her a party to celebrate 50 years of running the tavern, cooking for her for a change after all the years she'd cooked for them. Monowi became famous after the 2010 census recorded it as the only incorporated place in the United States with a population of one. The 2020 census listed Monowi's population as two, but that was a product of the Census Bureau's privacy protections, which add small random changes to data for tiny places. Elsie is still the only resident.