Centralia

Understand

History

Centralia was founded as "Bulls Head" in 1811; the 155 acre Centralia Borough was incorporated in 1862. The primary local industry was the extraction of anthracite coal. Many of the original workers were Irish; there was a long history of labour disputes. Ukrainian immigrants soon followed. The borough had nearly 3,000 people at its peak; there were 1,100 people in Centralia in 1962.

Centralia is now a ghost town with a population of less than five. An underground coal fire has been burning underneath the town since 1962. The full extent of the danger became known in 1979, and the town was abandoned between 1984 and 1992. In 1992, Pennsylvania claimed eminent domain over the remaining houses in the borough. The main highway has been re-routed away from the fire; most of the structures in the town have been demolished, leaving a damaged wasteland of empty streets.

Watch

Portions of the 2006 horror film Silent Hill were inspired by the story of Centralia as recounted to screenwriter Roger Avary by his father, a mine engineer; the picture is nominally set in West Virginia.

Get in

Centralia is two miles north of Ashland, Pennsylvania and can be reached on state highways 54 and 61. Part of the highway between Ashland and Centralia has been rerouted around the site of the fire.

Get around

You can drive around the highways. Most of the surface streets, however, are in poor condition.

Stay safe

When the coal was mined, a few pillars of coal were left intact to prevent the ground above from collapsing into the mine. The fire has destroyed these pillars, leaving badly-damaged ground with huge cracks which release smoke, heat and toxic fumes. This makes much of Centralia very unsafe.

Try to stay upwind of any smoke or steam that you see rising from the ground as it’s likely toxic.

Respect

As a few people still live here, some homes are still occupied. Please leave them undisturbed and refrain from adding to the vandalism and graffiti that less responsible visitors have created – both for the residents’ sake and for the sake of the next visitors to enter Centralia.

Go next

Nearby Ashland offers food, gas, lodging, and a coal mine tour at Pioneer Tunnel. The mine tour includes an underground mine tour, and an above-ground narrow gauge railroad ride to an old bootleg mine at a site where Centralia is visible at a distance. The same vein of anthracite that is burning underneath Centralia extends through Ashland and can be seen as part of the underground portion of the Pioneer Tunnel tour, although the fire at Centralia is not expected to threaten Ashland for several decades.

Mount Carmel also offers food, and is larger than Ashland.

Looking for an environmental disaster of comparable severity? Picher (Oklahoma), 1150 mi and one time zone to the west, is an abandoned town undermined by decades of lead extraction. The surface water is contaminated by mine tailings; a deadly tornado drove the last nail in Picher's coffin in 2008.

If Centralia wasn't enough to quench your thirst for underground fire pits, and you are willing to drive five hours in the desert in a country infamous for visa difficulties, Darvaza, the only other place in the world quite like Centralia, awaits.