Optimization of resonances associated with 1-D wave equations in inhomogeneous media is studied under the constraint B 1 ≤ m on the nonnegative function B ∈ L 1 (0, ℓ) that represents the medium's structure. From the Physics and Optimization points of view, it convenient to generalize the problem replacing B by a nonnegative measure dM and imposing on dM the condition that its total mass is ≤ m. The problem is to design for a given frequency α ∈ R a medium that generates a resonance ω on the line α + iR with a minimal possible decay rate | Im ω|. Such resonances are said to be of minimal decay and form a Pareto frontier. We show that corresponding optimal measures consist of finite number of point masses, and that this result yields non-existence of optimizers for the problem over the set of absolutely continuous measures B(x)dx. Then we derive restrictions on optimal point masses and their positions. These restrictions are strong enough to calculate optimal dM if the optimal resonance ω, the first point mass m 1 , and one more geometric parameter are known. This reduces the original infinitely-dimensional problem to optimization over four real parameters. For small frequencies, we explicitly find the Pareto set and the corresponding optimal measures dM . The technique of the paper is based on the two-parameter perturbation method and the notion of local boundary point. The latter is introduced as a generalization of local extrema to vector optimization problems.MSC-classes: 49R05, 58E17, 35B34, 34L15, 32A60, 58C06