Centralia, PA
I went here in 06 and took pics.. my grandfather showed this town when I was younger because he lives in nearby Shamokin, PA.. and i always remembered this so I decided to go back and take pics.. Interesting stuff men and women..
Johnathan Faust opened Bull's Head Tavern in 1841 in what was then Roaring Creek Township. In 1854, Alexander W. Rea, a civil and mining engineer for the Locust Mountain Coal and Iron Company, moved to the site and laid out streets and lots for development. The town was known as Centreville until 1865, when the post office was established and the name was changed to Centralia. Centralia was incorporated as a borough in 1866. The anthracite coal industry was the principal employer in the community. Coal mining continued in Centralia until the 1960s, when most of the companies went out of business. Bootleg mining continued until 1982. Strip and open-pit mining is still active in the area, and there is an underground mine employing about 40 employees three miles to the west.
The borough was also a hotbed of Molly Maguires activity during the 1860s and 1870s. The borough's founder, Alexander Rea, was one of the victims of the secret order when he was murdered just outside of the borough on October 17, 1868. Three individuals were convicted of the crime and hanged in the county seat of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania on March 25, 1878. Several other murders and arsons also occurred during this period.
The borough was served by two railroads, the Philadelphia and Reading and the Lehigh Valley, with the Lehigh Valley being the principal carrier. Rail service ended in 1966. The borough operated its own school district with elementary schools and a high school within its precincts. There were also two Catholic parochial schools in the borough. The borough once had seven churches, five hotels, twenty-seven saloons, two theatres, a bank, post office, and fourteen general and grocery stores. During most of the borough's history, when coal mining activity was being conducted, the town had a population in excess of 2,000 residents. Another 500 to 600 residents lived in unincorporated areas immediately adjacent to Centralia.[1]
Mine fire
In May 1962, Centralia Borough Council hired five members of the volunteer fire company to clean up the town landfill, located in an abandoned strip mine pit next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery. This had been done prior to Memorial Day in previous years, when the landfill was in a different location. The firefighters, as they had in the past, set the dump on fire, and let it burn for a time. Unlike in previous years, however, the fire was not extinguished.
In her 2007 book about Centralia, Joan Quigley asserts that the fire began on May 27 when one of the two commercial haulers serving the borough "hurled hot ashes onto the dump."[3] Quigley cites "interviews with volunteer firemen, the former fire chief, borough officials, and several eyewitnesses, as well as contemporaneous borough council minutes" as her sources for this explanation of the fire.
The fire remained burning in the lower depths of the garbage and eventually spread through a hole in the rock pit into the abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Adverse health effects were reported by several people due to the carbon monoxide produced.In 1979, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a gas-station owner inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F (77.8 °C). State-wide attention to the fire began to increase, culminating in 1981 when 12-year-old Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole four feet wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet. He was saved after his older cousin pulled him from the mouth of the hole before he could plunge to his probable death. The incident brought national attention to Centralia as an investigatory group (including a state representative, a state senator, and a mine safety director) was coincidentally on a walking tour of Domboski's neighborhood at the time of his near-death incident.
Section of PA Route 61 closed due to mine fire.
Section of PA Route 61 closed due to mine fire.
In 1984, Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation efforts. Most of the residents accepted buyout offers and moved to the nearby communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. A few families opted to stay despite warnings from state officials.
In 1992, Pennsylvania claimed eminent domain on all properties in the borough, condemning all the buildings within. A subsequent legal effort by residents to have the decision reversed failed. In 2002, the United States Postal Service revoked Centralia's ZIP code, 17927.
Today
A handful of occupied homes remain in Centralia. Most of the buildings have been razed, and at a casual glance the area now appears to be a meadow with several paved streets through it. Some areas are being filled with new-growth forest. Most of Centralia's roads and sidewalks are overgrown with brush, although some areas appear to be mowed.[4] The remaining church in the borough holds weekly Saturday night services, and the borough's four cemeteries are still well-maintained. Centralia's cemeteries now have a far greater population than the town, including one on the hilltop that has smoke rising around and out of it.
The only indications of the fire, which underlies some 400 acres (1.6 km²), spreading along four fronts, are low round metal steam vents in the south of the borough, and several signs warning of underground fire, unstable ground, and carbon monoxide. Additional smoke and steam can be seen coming from an abandoned portion of Pennsylvania Route 61, the area just behind the hilltop cemetery, and various other cracks in the ground scattered about the area. Route 61 was repaired several times until its final closing. The current route was a detour around the damaged portion during the repairs and became a permanent route in the mid-1990s, thus abandonment occurred to the old route with permanent barriers being placed at both ends of the former route. However, the underground fire is still burning and will continue to do so for the indefinite future. There are no current plans to extinguish the fire, which is consuming an eight-mile seam containing enough coal to fuel it for 250 years.[1]
One of the few remaining houses was notable for the five chimney-like support buttresses along each of two opposite sides of the house, where the house was previously supported by a row of adjacent buildings before they were demolished. This home was demolished in September 2007.[5]
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania did not renew the relocation contract at the end of 2005, and the fate of the remaining residents is uncertain.[6]
It is expected that many former residents will return in 2016 to open a time capsule buried in 1966 next to the veterans' memorial.[1]
Quote:
In the movie version of Silent Hill, the town of Silent Hill is suffering from a prolonged mine fire similar to Centralia, and aspects of this are shown throughout the movie, such as characters wandering through the Misty version of Silent Hill wearing mining gear.
Me in one of the cracks in the old road
Last edited by JiggsCasey : 05-04-2008 at 03:05 PM.
I wonder if any people in the distant future (250 years when the coal has all burned up) will move back to the city.
It would take an overhaul of the whole landscape.. There are alot of potential sinkholes.. THey would have to locate all those areas and fix them and make sure the place is safe.. Who knows what the landscape is going to be like then..
But hell think of it a booming little borough reduced to a few houses because of people polluting!!
WTF Early Man (early-mid 1900's) were fucking asssticks IMO.
Also Think of the tradegy of Chernobyl over in the Ukraine...
It would take an overhaul of the whole landscape.. There are alot of potential sinkholes.. THey would have to locate all those areas and fix them and make sure the place is safe.. Who knows what the landscape is going to be like then..
But hell think of it a booming little borough reduced to a few houses because of people polluting!!
WTF Early Man (early-mid 1900's) were fucking asssticks IMO.
Also Think of the tradegy of Chernobyl over in the Ukraine...
Some very good points! And yeah they really didn't have thier ***t togeather back in the day.
Marijuana
05-04-2008, 02:58 PM
Centralia, PA Underground Mine Fire 
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