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Elsie Eiler is 92, or somewhere around that. Despite her age, she’s the mayor of a town in the United States.
She’s also the bartender, chef, librarian, treasurer and clerk.
You might think that’s a lot of responsibility for one person — especially one some 30 years over retirement age — but she doesn’t have much choice. Elsie is the only person who lives there.
Today, according to the US Census, Monowi in Nebraska is the only incorporated place in the country with just one resident.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Founded in 1902 with the arrival of the railroad, Monowi reached its peak population in the 1930s, when around 150 people called it home.
Five miles from the South Dakota border in the remote northern reaches of the Nebraska, a long dirt road cuts through rolling prairies down to the town centre.
Back in the day, there were grocery stores, a restaurant, and even a prison.
However, after the rise of mechanised farming, coupled with a lack of local jobs and opportunities, younger generations slowly began to move away.
It’s not as sad as it seems, though. Elsie has no desire to move from the town she’s called home since the 1970s.
In fact, she’s adamant about staying, as Monowi holds so many happy memories for her.
After moving to north Nebraska as a child, Elsie grew up with five siblings and met her husband Rudy at the town’s one-room schoolhouse.
The couple briefly moved away to pursue different careers, but were eventually pulled back when they took over the town’s tavern that once belonged to Elsie’s father.
By the year 2000, they were the only residents.
Nobody is clear on how old Elsie really is. The BBC put her at 84 in 2020, and Wikipedia says she was born in October 1933 (making her 92 today).
Today, an abandoned church and wonky wooden buildings stand empty, having been reclaimed by nature in the decades they’ve been vacant.
You can’t expect one woman to maintain every structure, after all.
Besides, Elsie is busy with other responsibilities for all three of the village’s active buildings: the tavern, the library, and her own house.
She also grants and signs her own annual liquor license, cooks and serves customers at the bar (where prices reportedly haven’t changed for decades), and oversees the town’s budget, which includes maintaining its four traffic lights.
In 2005, a year after Rudy’s death, Elsie created Monowi’s only library, filling it with the 5,000 books her late husband had collected over his lifetime.
Here, visitors can sign the guest book and read records of the town’s history.
Elsie once explained her unique set-up to the BBC: ‘When I apply to the state for my liquor and tobacco licenses each year, they send them to the secretary of the village, which is me.
‘So, I get them as the secretary, sign them as the clerk and give them to myself as the bar owner.’
She also said she’s ‘happy’ in Monowi, and would find it ‘hard to change after so many years.’
While many of Elsie’s customers are truck drivers and ‘regulars’ who live within 20 to 30 miles, she also welcomes travellers intrigued by Monowi with open arms.
On TikTok, there’s plenty of content about the town, including from those who have visited.
Some share eerie footage of desolate buildings and grey skies. Others head there solely to meet the legend that is Elsie.
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