24/7 Trauma and Biohazard Cleanup in Monowi, NE

Monowi is an incorporated village in Boyd County, Nebraska, and the least populous incorporated municipality in the United States.

Monowi was platted in 1902 after the Mason, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad was extended into the area, and a post office operated in the village from 1902 to 1967.

The name Monowi is traditionally said to mean "flower" in an unidentified Native American language, after the wildflowers that grew at the original townsite.

Monowi peaked at about 150 residents in the 1930s — 123 were counted in the 1930 census — and then declined for decades, falling to 18 residents by 1980 and 6 by 1990.

By the 2000 census only two residents remained in Monowi, Rudy and Elsie Eiler, and after Rudy's death in 2004 Elsie Eiler became the village's sole resident.

The 2010 census counted exactly one resident in Monowi: Elsie Eiler.

The published 2020 census count for Monowi was two, but the Census Bureau confirmed that the second "resident" was an artifact of the statistical noise added to protect respondents' privacy, and Eiler remains the village's only actual resident.

As Monowi's only resident, Elsie Eiler serves as the village's mayor, clerk, treasurer, librarian, and bartender, and she votes for herself in village elections.

Eiler issues her own liquor license and files the annual municipal road plan Monowi needs to keep receiving state funding for its streetlights.

She runs the Monowi Tavern, which she and her husband took over in 1971, and it draws visitors from across the country and abroad who come to meet the one-person town's entire government.