1. Centralia, Penn.
At one time, the town of Centralia, Penn., supported almost 3,000 residents, with stores, churches, hotels and bars. It was a boomtown, established in 1866 and built from the profits of coal mined out of the Pennsylvania hillside. It was this same coal that led to Centralia’s almost complete demise.
City workers burning trash in an open pit in 1962 accidentally lit a vein of anthracite coal, part of the vast deposit that lay beneath the town [source: Washington Post]. Once lit, the coal carried the flames to adjacent veins and deposits, eventually causing a huge underground coal fire. The city tried for years to put the fire out. Techniques like mining burning coal, digging trenches to cut the fire off from the rest of the coal beds, and dousing the embers with water all failed to produce the desired effect. Officials concluded the best chance to save the town was to dig an extensive network of trenches to isolate the hot spots. The exorbitant cost of the undertaking kept the plan from ever coming to fruition.
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In 1981, with the fire burning steadily for almost 20 years, the last straw came for most of the town’s residents. A 12-year-old found the ground beneath his feet had literally opened up. The boy managed to grab onto a root and was rescued by his cousin from the 150-feet deep sinkhole filled with poisonous carbon monoxide [source: Washington Post].
The federal government allocated $42 million for the relocation of Centralia’s residents in 1982, essentially declaring the town a lost cause [source: DeKok]. Most Centralians took the offer of help, leaving the town almost entirely abandoned. A few chose to stay; around 20 residents remain in Centralia as squatters in what were once their legitimately owned homes. The government closed the main egress into town, Route 61, detouring traffic, and effectively cutting off the burning town and its remaining inhabitants from the rest of the world. Those roads that haven’t been reclaimed by vegetation are buckled and cracked, with white noxious gas spewing from underground. Most of the buildings either caught fire or were leveled to keep them from burning. The town’s cemetery and a few houses, some still inhabited, remain.
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