I can’t decide if this is sad or kinda neat. As you see in that sign, the town of Monowi, Nebraska has a population of one person. Her name is Elsie Eiler, and she is 77 years old. Most of the town’s buildings are crumbling down, and as you can imagine, it’s very quiet and desolate.

The last event at the town church, which is pictured below, was the funeral for Elsie’s father fifty years ago. Elsie works at the tavern where she claims she serves the coldest beer in town. Of course, she is the only employee and it’s the only beer in town, so business is good. She serves the people passing through who decide to stop.

The streets of the town don’t really look like streets. They are overgrown with grass and weeds, and look more like little pathways. Monowi has always been a small town. Even back in the 1930s there were only 150 people living there. However, now it’s a very different scene. For example, the town school hasn’t had any children there in three decades. Elsie spends some of her time in the library which has 5,000 books stored in it. Most of them belonged to her late husband, who by the way, she met in elementary school in this same town when she was a little girl.

Don’t feel sorry for Elsie though. She stays there because she wants to, and she loves it! She is even the town mayor. Plugging finances into a tax calculator, she figured she could raise taxes on herself so she could repair four streetlights. She knows that when she can’t care for herself anymore, she will have to leave the town like everyone else, but until that day comes, she will enjoy the cold beer and the notoriety of being the town’s only resident. You go girl!