Monowi, Nebraska

I thought that this blog assignment was very interesting, although I never knew there was anything like this on wikipedia I enjoyed reading some of the articles.  I really had a tough time finding an article to write about even though there were so many options on there.   The article that I found the most interesting was Monowi, Nebraska.  I found this to be the most interesting because the population of this town is one person.   I have never heard of such a thing and honestly didn't even know that was possible.  The town was founded in 1902 and only had a post office, after that shut down there was really nothing to it.  In the 1930's was when they had the peak of their population at just 130 residents.   The village has a total area of only 0.21 square miles. Monowi is located in the far eastern portion of Boyd County, in the northeastern region of Nebraska.  After Monowi lost its younger residents due to them moving to different towns for better job opportunities the population was at just two.  The two residents were a husband and wife, Rudy and Elsie Eiler.  After Rudy passed away if was only Elsie that lived there.  She now has a library in the town and a Tavern that she owns.  Residents from almost 80 miles away come in to her Tavern to eat.  The library and the Tavern have been on a couple of different T.V shows such as the today  show, CBS Sunday morning and also appeared on Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy.  Larry announced on a radio show that he was going to be having a hot dog roast in order to raise money for Elsie.  Although the town is so small over a 1,000 people showed up and they raised an overwhelming amount of money for Elsie.  Elsie is the Mayor of Monowi since she is the only one that lives there.  She also granted herself a liquor license and pays taxes to herself.  In order to secure state funding she also has to produce a municipal road plan every year in order to keep the four street lights that are in the town.  Personally I did learn a lot from reading this because I didn't know that it was possible to have a town with only one person, I just can't see how that would work.  I had no idea that it was possible to pay your taxes to yourself, but I guess since she is the only one there she can't pay anyone else.  I'm also a little confused by it, I'm curious as to who she pays her bills to.  I had never heard of this story before which made it more interesting for me to read.  The only way I can see this information being useful is if you are doing research that has to do with towns with a small population, otherwise I don't really think that this information is important.  Considering the wiki page I found this on is called unusual articles I am not surprised that it was on there because this is a very unusual situation.  Since it is so unusual it definitely deserves to be on wikipedia, I believe that more people should read this since I'm sure not many people know about this.  You can't find just about anything on Wikipedia that is another reason why I wasn't surprised this was on here.  I doubt that you would be able to find this anywhere else because it isn't really anything important, although it is interesting it isn't that important.  I would love to be able to visit it here, it has to be one of the only places in the world that only has the population of one.  If I am ever in Nebraska I will definitely make sure to drive through this small town.