America's Smallest Town Is In The Midwest And It Has Just One Resident

If you're looking for a slice of small-town America on your Midwest road trip, it literally doesn't get any smaller than Monowi, Nebraska. This incorporated village in Boyd County, located just a few miles from the South Dakota state line, only survives because one dedicated woman keeps filing the necessary paperwork. As you approach the village from the east on Highway 12, you'll see a road sign that reads, "Monowi 1," but that's not a mile marker. It's a population count.

Monowi's sole resident is Elsie Eiler, who has spent over 50 years running the local bar and grill. She and her late husband bought the Monowi Tavern in 1971, and now, it's the only business in town. Aside from the tavern and a vacant building next door — which leans to one side like it's about to fall over — Monowi consists of three lampposts, an abandoned church and grain elevator, Elsie's trailer, and Rudy's Library. The library is stocked with some 5,000 books that her husband collected in his lifetime, and it relies on the honor system.

When Rudy passed away in 2004, Monowi lost half its population, forcing Elsie to take on more responsibility. Tavern owner is just one of the many roles she fills in her official duties as the last remaining citizen of America's smallest town. She's also Monowi's mayor, clerk, secretary, treasurer, and tax collector, which means she can approve her own liquor license, among other things. When she turned 91 in October 2024, the governor even made her an admiral in Nebraska's navy, the joke being that it's a landlocked state where she has "tadpoles and goldfish" under her command.

In 2018, Elsie Eiler and the town of Monowi appeared in a commercial for Arby's, as the fast-food chain set a Guinness World Record for "largest advertising poster" while announcing its adoption of Coca-Cola products. You will, in fact, find Coke at the Monowi Tavern, along with Budweiser and $3.50 hamburgers. Needless to say, if Monowi is the town that time forgot, that extends to the menu prices, which have remained constant through the years. It's only $2.00 for a grilled cheese sandwich and $1.25 for a hot dog. The most expensive dish is a rib eye or T-bone steak for $14.75.

While Monowi is a one-woman town, a steady stream of customers passes through the tavern, which is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. until the final customer leaves at 9 p.m. or later. Elsie waits on about 50 people a day, so she's not just sitting around twiddling her thumbs in a rocking chair as a nonagenarian. Among her regulars are State Patrol officers, sheriffs from Boyd County and the neighboring Knox County, local hunters, and farmers who come here to play cards during the winter.

In addition to area residents from 20-plus miles away, the Monowi Tavern attracts road-trippers who have traveled much further for the novelty of visiting a town with a population of 1. Visitors from all 50 states and just as many countries have stopped by over the years. When you're driving cross-country on the Road to Nowhere, you can make a detour west at Valentine, Nebraska, and be in Monowi in under two and half hours.

"Two and a half hours west of nowhere" might not seem like the most ringing endorsement, but it's a testament to Midwestern resilience that Monowi has managed to avoid extinction. Elsie Eiler survived a bout with colon cancer and is still on her feet, serving customers 12 hours a day. She's also keeping the town's name and its history alive long after the rest of its denizens have moved on.

According to the Library of Congress, the Pioneer Townsite Company first established Monowi as a stop along the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad in 1902. This makes it older than Nebraska's first state park in Chadron, which wasn't established until 1921. Various sources put the town's population between 120 and 150 in the 1930s, but the church held its last funeral (for Elsie's father) in 1960, while the railroad closed in 1978. Today, even the nearest Walmart is 60 miles away, while the Monowi Tavern has its food supplies trucked in from roughly the same distance.

Nebraska itself has a population of less than 2 million, putting it below the four biggest U.S. cities, the closest of which is Chicago, about a 10-hour drive from Monowi. This all goes to say that you could drive right by the town without even realizing the significance of its few remaining buildings. The Monowi Tavern is a pocket of life that could soon be gone, so add it to your travels before it's lost to history — as long as you don't mind using the restroom in an outhouse.

[Featured image by Andrew Filer via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY-SA 2.0]