Welcome to the smallest town in Washington, population: 50

MARLIN/KRUPP, Wash. – In this community near the middle of the state, 10% of the population is on the town council.

Tucked in a low coulee along Crab Creek on the eastern border of Grant County, Krupp, also known as Marlin, is the Evergreen State’s smallest incorporated town, meaning it has its own local government.

Mayor Tracy Lesser, a rancher-farmer by trade, has held the mayor position since 1982, when he was just 24 years old. He joined the council four years before that

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Now 67, Lesser is standing for re-election again this year, but no one has filed to run against him. Nobody else seems to want the job, which is why he still has it. In the 2021 general election, Lesser won with 18 votes against one for a write-in candidate.

“I think sometimes in a small town like this, you’re mayor until you either move out of town, quit or die,” Lesser said.

Krupp began as a stop on the Great Northern Railway, built through the valley in 1892. The post office opened in 1901 along with other businesses and an influx of German immigrants with enough grit to farm the surrounding scablands. The town incorporated in 1911.

Incidentally, when World War I broke out, “Krupp” became synonymous with a German munitions manufacturer. To avoid that association, the town began to go by Marlin, for Henry Marlin, the town’s earliest non-Native settler who arrived before the railroad.

The post office adopted the name change, but it was never officially filed with the secretary of state’s office. The dual name sticks to this day, as the road signs say, “Welcome to Marlin/Krupp.”

Officially, the name remains Krupp, but locals still call it Marlin.

Although the town was once a bustling metropolis of 100 people, the population has remained steady, hovering at about 50 for the past 50 years.

The sleepy hamlet is hidden out of the way of most traffic, 3 miles north of the rural state Highway 28. Besides a grain elevator that towers over the railroad and the post office open two hours a day, there are no businesses.

Krupp has been the subject of curiosity over the years, by media outlets and road trippers alike, especially motorcyclists on scenic rides in the summer.

It appears in a photography book featuring the smallest town in all 50 states, for example.

But there’s not much to see besides a historic fire engine monument to James L. Friend, a longtime fire chief who died in 2001.

The rest of main street, called Urquhart Avenue for another early settler, consists of half a dozen shuttered buildings concentrated mostly on one side of the road.

A block down from the current post office, the original one remains preserved as a time capsule in one of the town’s oldest buildings.

An old-fashioned gas pump stands in front of a nondescript garage that stores a working fire engine overseen by the fire district based down the road in Wilson Creek. The town is too small now to support even a volunteer fire department.

West of Urquhart Avenue is a small neighborhood of less than two dozen homes all contained in about half a square mile.

There are no formal town events or annual celebrations. Locals like living here because it’s quiet and peaceful.

But Lesser has a hard time describing what it was like to grow up in the community.

“I don’t know what it was like to grow up anywhere else,” he said with a shrug.

Things have changed in subtle ways over the years. Lesser attended the Marlin school through second grade, when it closed and consolidated with Wilson Creek School District about 9 miles west.

He estimates about half a dozen children live there now.

“When I was growing up, there were more kids in town,” said Paul Friend, a councilman a few years younger than Lesser. “I used to know everyone; now I don’t.”

The grocery store and tavern closed in the ’80s. For some newcomers, the town is a bedroom for day jobs in Moses Lake about 30 miles southwest.

Friend recently retired from a career at the grain elevator and co-op, now owned by Highline Grain Growers. The elevator collects wheat harvested in July and August, then stores it until it is ready to be shipped away by train or truck.

Lesser said he was encouraged to join the council at a young age by his neighbors who were members.

“I got married in June of ’78 and I remember walking from that house over to a council meeting,” Lesser said.

He’s open to retiring if someone else wants the job.

“But until I see that happening, I got really no reason to not just keep doing it,” Lesser said.

It is sometimes difficult to fill the rest of the five-member town council, so family members often are recruited. Lesser’s wife, retired accountant Katherine Lesser, is the town clerk.

City hall is in a former church house next to the fire station, but the town doesn’t use it because it’s bigger than needed for meetings and impractical to heat for half an hour a month during the winter.

Lately the town council meets in a small community room in the post office. Over the past year, Friend has been working with his wife and fellow council member, Lori Friend, to fix up the room into a museum with local history.

Lesser started the most recent council meeting Monday night around 7:30 p.m. to discuss their priority on the agenda: pay the bills.

“Is there a motion to approve the bills or any discussion?” Lesser asked the four council members in attendance.

The bills included $57.47 for the town’s electricity and $233.20 for the streetlights, both paid to Grant County’s Public Utility District.

Although there were other things listed on the agenda, such as doing cleanup around the community, the only other crucial task was to make sure to get a tree branch removed on the corner of White and Hamilton Streets – which Jasper Hendricks, city council member, agreed to look into.

“Unless anyone else has any other business going on, our meeting is pretty short and quiet,” Lesser said.

By 7:50 p.m., the council had signed off on the bills and filled out the voucher sheets, wrapping things up for the night.

“Mostly we pay our power bills and any other bills that might come up,” Lesser said of typical meetings.

The town oversees a budget of about $35,000 a year. Lesser said the council is very conservative with its reserve fund. It might not seem like a lot of money, but it’s a tight margin of error that is difficult to replenish.

The town’s other responsibilities include maintaining the former high school’s gymnasium, occasionally used as an event space, and the Marlin Cemetery, which is outside the town’s main boundaries but annexed a few years back. Katherine Lesser mows and weeds the plot every spring before Memorial Day.

“There were some good people that lived here,” Katherine Lesser said as she wiped the dust from her face. “They would have taken care of it, so I want to take care of it for them.”

Some might wonder if it’s worth the effort and expense to keep a town this size going. While the subject of disincorporation comes up once in a while, it isn’t taken seriously, Tracy Lesser said. Residents and council members alike say they want to keep local control.

“As long as the town can afford it and there’s people who want to serve on the council, I see no reason why we won’t continue,” he said.

Residents seldom show up to council meetings, and complaints are rare.

“I have been yelled at and told a thing or two before,” Tracy Lesser said. “But it’s been quite a while. Kind of comes with the territory, I suppose. Occasionally someone’s going to get upset about something.”

He remembers a woman once attended a meeting very worked up and yelled at the council. She apologized the next day when she saw him at the post office and said she didn’t know what came over her.

Small towns sometimes foster a lot of drama, feuds and bitter infighting, but not so much in Marlin, Lesser said.

“We’re almost too small for that.”

Monica Carrillo-Casas contributed to this story.