Inside the town with lowest population where one woman is mayor, librarian, and bartender

Way out in the plains of Nebraska, the mayor of Monowi might serve you a drink. Or lend you a library book. Or make you a hamburger.

Elsie Eiler is the lone inhabitant of Monowi, the record holder for lowest population (town), and serves as its mayor, town clerk, town treasurer, town secretary, tavern keeper and chief librarian. She lived here with her husband Rudy until his passing in 2004, and the nonagenarian has since become the only resident recorded on the US Census.

After moving to north Nebraska when she was young, Elsie grew up with five siblings in the 0.21 sq mi farming community, and met her husband Rudy at the one-room schoolhouse in town. After briefly moving away, the couple settled back in Monowi for life, and witnessed the population dwindle down to two as young folks and industry left the area.

But Elsie’s life is far from lonely – she works 12 hours a day, six days a week at the tavern, making coffee, drinks, and food for local farmers, friends, and curious passersby. Her family has owned the tavern since 1971, and its prices are reminiscent of those old days – as of last year, a beer was $2, a burger $3.50.

“The bar is the town, and I’m the town. We’re all so intermeshed, you can’t quite imagine one without the other,” she told the New York Times. “This is my home. All my friends are around. Why would I want to leave?” 

Of the three active buildings in Monowi – the tavern, library, and her home – Elsie runs them all, issuing herself annual liquor licenses and signing them, serving up food at the bar, and handling the town’s budget for its four stoplights. She also established the town’s only library in 2005, using the 5,000 books left behind by her late husband Rudy, an avid reader. 

And without her filing the paperwork, the town literally would not exist – “like Monowi, I’m too tough to die,” she once said. 

Nevertheless, the proud Nebraskan is unaffected by her new fame, and is used to the occasional tourist stopping by for a drink out in the Middle of Nowhere. She says she’s had visitors from all 50 states and over 60 countries, and even had a prior taste of Guinness World Records fame in 2018 when Arby’s erected the largest advertising poster in Monowi.

“[The attention] doesn’t impress me any, I don’t see what the big deal is,” she said in an interview. “The only thing I appreciate is the fact that it opened up this area, that people see something in Nebraska besides I-80 going flat across the state, y’know. Say they realize we’ve got hills and fields and farms and people up here in the Northern part. That part I like.”

And she always has her friends and family to keep her company, including her great-grandchildren, who gathered with the rest of the surrounding townsfolk in 2021 to throw Elsie a party for her 50th year operating the town tavern.

“They don’t see the camaraderie of when the group comes around the table and has their coffee in the morning or their beer at 5 o’clock,” Rene Lassise, Elsie’s daughter, told the New York Times. 

“They don’t see that it’s real people, and it’s real connections to the people and the land and that place that keep her there.”

These lingering connections with the community often keeps solitary residents in towns long-abandoned, and allows them to appreciate what they have. Elsie’s sentiments are reflected in the citizens of other towns with low populations, like Rouchefourchat, France – which up until recently only had one resident – when inhabitor Josette said “here, we make do with little and are happy with little.” Like Elsie, she lives a life “without boredom or blues” – though she does have to keep an eye on the wolfpacks that circle the mountainside.

Yet sadly, the lives of these tiny towns are tied to their remaining residents, and Elsie knows that when she goes, Monowi goes with her. 

“If I let myself sit and think about it, I feel sad that the time is going to come that I can’t be in there,” she said. 

“I don’t know what the future holds for here, but I’d like to see it keep going. Otherwise, it’s just going to be another bunch of shambled buildings on the side of the road.”

Header image: Dry Valley Church in Nebraska / Pixabay