Centralia, Pennsylvania - Centralia Mine Fire

Centralia, Pennsylvania - Centralia Mine Fire

Best viewed in the morning, when the heat burns off the dew in clouds of steam rising from cracks in the earth (and road). Warning: this place can kill! Roadsideamerica.com Report...

Centralia, Pennsylvania - Centralia - Town Atop a Mine Fire

My husband recalled memories of passing through the town and seeing the smoke coming from the ground. I was up for a road trip already that day and sought to find it for myself. It took a while to find because only a handful of houses remain. You blink, you miss it. Once we found it it was not as thrilling as I expected.

Centralia is mainly overgrown brush and trees. Three points I must bring up are the wonderful things I noticed. One a lone house is very noticeable from Rt. 61 heading North. On the sidewalk near it is a green bench with the name of the town and the year it was officially founded. Behind that is a well manicured lawn and a Veterans Memorial. The second thing to note (a bit funny) is up on the hill, which is actually Rt. 42, is the town borough building, housing a fire truck and a police car. A final note is the beautiful cemetery further back on Rt. 61. A small patch is paved in front of a well-maintained iron fence.

I recommend giving the town a look see, but take the warnings seriously. We only drove as far as our car could go on the vacant over grown streets. We passed two cars without occupants in the middle of nowhere. Don't now if they were abandoned or what. I never got out of the car. Too creepy.

While Centralia holds a bit of excitement to it, at the same time I was a bit saddened by how the town once was and no longer is. [Amanda, 07/23/2008]

Centralia, Pennsylvania - Ghost Town Mine Fire

This place was one of the destinations in our trip around PA. We were expecting all these warning signs posted and "Road Closed" barriers blocking off the abandoned Rt. 61 and all that smoke coming out of the ground.

For the most part, we were disappointed. No warning signs, no "road closed" barriers - but the smoking ground didn't disappoint! The fire is now past the St. Ignatus Cemetery and continues to puff out massive clouds of smoke. We followed a family over a hump to the right of the roadblock (in the direction of Ashville, right after the cemetery), and found more smoke in a rocky terrain along with various moldering furniture and rusted junk. There was a toliet ripped off of its base and abandoned here.

If you walk over the hump behind the big arrow sign and go down probably half a mile down the abandoned Rt 61, you can see a massive fissure in the road with lots of smoke coming out. It's easy to find, actually - with all the graffiti written around it. [Nat Balsley, 02/23/2008]

Centralia, Pennsylvania - Town Atop a Burning Coal Mine

Driving through Pennsylvania, my friend Brian managed to drop his cell phone on the Interstate, where it was picked up by a State Trooper. He said "We all got a big laugh out of it down at the station" when they heard that we were going to Centralia. "You're going to be disappointed - It's just a town with some smoke coming out of the ground."

We were anything but disappointed. [Maeve Sullivan, 01/30/2008]

Centralia, Pennsylvania - Centralia, PA

This perpetually burning town, this human hell on surface earth is no longer really "burning" and far from anything hellish. There are no chimneys arising from streets to let off primordial fire and brimstone, no eery warning signs- there is nothing to draw anyone there, for any reason, any longer....

Went far out of our way in the pouring rain too see a garbage dump (literally) letting off some steam. [Stan Banos, 09/24/2007]