Some highlights of my trip to my hometown in Pennsylvania during the holiday break (winter 2022-2023) where I recorded footage for my documentary about the infamous abandoned coal mining town Centralia. What you see here appears to be a bunch of graffiti, empty roads, and overgrown brush – but a few decades ago, this was an entire small town full of houses, schools, and churches.
Background on my voyages: as a native of Central Pennsylvania, I’ve always been fascinated by the tragic history of this abandoned town. Since late 2021 onward, I would occasionally travel to Centralia as a pitstop during my trips home to Lancaster to see family. Usually I would just wander around with my cameras to chronicle the remains of the former town. During 2022 I planned on creating an entire documentary about the rise and fall of Centralia, using stop-motion LEGO animation as a basis. Currently as of the time of this article, the video has never been completed, although it’s still in pre-production.
So here’s the general overview of Centralia. Back in 1962, a coal mine fire started by accident because the town’s former garbage dump was within an old surface mine that was within close range to an active anthracite mine. When the garbage was ignited, the flames spread to the nearby coal mine shaft and eventually the fire spread throughout the labyrinth of mine shafts under the town. Since the town was built in the mountains full of rich coal seams, it provided adequate fuel to burn for decades. Residents at the time didn’t know of the severity of the situation, and often remarked at the strangeness of seeing flames appear at the entrances of the mine shaft near the garbage dump.
Due to various bureaucratic and political factors in the subsequent years, the fire situation grew worse, and multiple townspeople were getting sick from carbon monoxide in their homes. Several anomalies occurred such as steam randomly appearing from cracks in the ground, snow melting in isolated spots in the winter, and eventually sinkholes appearing in peoples backyards. The pavement of the main highway to the town began to collapse due to extreme heat below, and was thus blocked off and re-routed. The current highway leading to Centralia was made from an access road for logging.
By the 1980s, the townspeople agreed to evacuate and demolish most of the homes, with the only a few sporadic houses remaining during the ’90s – giving the appearance of a ghost town. The eeriness of the empty town with steam coming up from the cracked roads made this place a prime location for curious tourists to see for themselves the legend of an entire town with a fire constantly burning below it. This town and its legacy was actually the inspiration for the popular video game franchise Silent Hill. During this time, multiple boreholes were drilled throughout the town as a means to vent gases from underground. At present day, some of the borehole sites remain but sealed off.
As of the 2010s to present day, only a few houses remain, and from the outside it appears as if the remains of Centralia are nothing but a bunch of empty cracked roads which lead to nowhere except overgrown vegetation. There haven’t been many reports of flames nor steam coming from the ground in recent years, so it’s relatively safe to hike through the empty roads and dirt piles without fear of noxious gases or fires below. Visiting this place is always a reminder of how easy it is for a typical American town to simply become wiped off the map due to simple errors in judgment.
The photos seen here were taken by me in late 2022 on an usually warm winter day. I dressed in Army fatigues and roamed around the remains of the town to capture some photos, and then recorded video footage with my GoPro mounted to my car.
Standing in the decrepit remains of a house in Byrnesville, a small town that bordered Centralia and was also demolished.
Wide view of the former main street of Centralia, Locust Street. This street once had numerous houses and businesses aligning both sides of the street. Where you currently see trees and brush is where the buildings once stood.
View looking down Locust Street, where you can see the currently-intact Ukrainian Catholic Church off on the distance. The church was built over steady mountain terrain and was declared safe from the underground mine fires.
A sealed-off borehole currently located on the grounds of the former town.
The starting point to the former infamous graffiti highway in the south part of town. The graffiti highway – a.k.a. the former Route 61 – was a stretch of highway which originally led to the town. When the mine fires were at their worst throughout the 1980s, the road began to collapse with fissures and sinkholes. The road was sealed off from public use, but became a popular destination for urban explorers who would tag the road with graffiti. After the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the graffiti highway was covered up with mounds of dirt to deter motorists from trying to ride dirtbikes.
Upon entering the overgrown plants by the yellow arrow sign, we can see the true entrance of the graffiti highway. In the last shot you can see me standing alone among the former highway.
Here’s the former graffiti highway covered in mounds of dirt to deter urban explorers.
Below are various screenshots of my GoPro camera footage when I walked around and drove up and down the abandoned streets, hence the notable decline in camera quality:
Walking down the torn-up graffiti highway covered in mounds of dirt and gravel. This was a very warm day at the end of December, and the snow had melted.
A piece of graffiti on the road on the edge of town, near the Ukrainian Church.
Various empty and abandoned streets. Keep in mind that 50 years ago, these were regular residential streets with buildings and sidewalks on both sides. In some of the pictures you can still see the remains of former sidewalks and storm gutters.
Different angles of one of the final few remaining homes in the entire town. This house is so narrow because it was once a row-home in a populated street full of buildings. All of the neighboring buildings have been demolished.
Another one of the few remaining houses, just on the edge of town. This house is notable for its unusual array of brick buttresses on the side for support. Like the previous house, this used to be among a series of row-homes on a populated and busy street. All of the adjoining homes had been demolished, and this house was retrofitted with brick buttresses to provide stability.