This past June, a friend and I got together for a car cruise we’d been talking about for quite some time, and the timing was perfect - he’d just taken delivery of a 2017 Jaguar F-Type S Coupe in British Racing Green, equipped with the supercharged V6 outputting 380 angry horses. With both of us hungry to book some miles, carve up country backroads, and get some schweet car pics, we decided to take our cars cruising North into Pennsylvania, heading the general direction of Centralia, PA - an abandoned mining town with a storied history and unofficial scenic highway… of sorts.
My friend and I have discussed the ghost down of Centralia for years, and since we’ve pretty thoroughly explored the entire Shenandoah Valley in Virginia to the West, the rural roads of Fredericksburg and Charlottesville to the South, and there’s no twisty mountain passes across the Chesapeake to the East, heading North to Centralia was the perfect choice. On our way North, we only took interstates to cross into Pennsylvania to get into the state, then as a rule we only used country roads, and we didn’t even take direct routes, often ignoring Waze’s directions to instead take more interesting looking roads heading the general direction of the town. We stopped several times, and even ran into a Porsche driver from our same hometown who was doing the same thing as us - taking his Cayman out to carve up some twisties.
This car cruise was in the midst of the Brood X cicadas’ descent upon the region in 2021. Even with our cars freshly cleaned for this photography car cruise, I packed my entire detailing bucket, with an extra can of bug and tar remover, grimly anticipating the disaster that our front bumpers and windshields were going to become, and dreading the amount of Photoshop it would require to remove all the carcasses from the front of our bug-plows in post. To our surprise, just after crossing out of Maryland into Pennsylvania, we stopped hitting cicadas. Brood X just wasn’t present, or yet active, in Pennsylvania; a fact we sensed while driving, and would add a dash of spookiness to our destination.
Centralia, PA
Centralia is weird; there’s no getting around it. As of 2020, the total population of this once-industrialized mining town is 5. If, like me, you’re into the weird, obscure, odd, and macabre, you’ve probably heard of Centralia. If you haven’t heard of Centralia, let me summarize:
Centralia is on fire. It has been on fire since 1962. And it is expected to be on fire for the next 250+ years.
Dating back to the late 1700s, Centralia was settled in 1841 and officially incorporated 25 years later. Coal was discovered during railroad construction in 1854, which triggered Centralia to boom into existence just like countless other mining towns across the Northeast. In 1890, the single-industry town reached its peak population of 2,761 residents.
Centralia operated as the small mining town it began life as until the 1960s, when the remaining underground coal mining companies shuttered, although bootleg mining of coal reportedly continued illegally until 1982. In its history, Centralia was home to numerous murders, including that of its founder, Alexander Rae. In the mid-to-late-1800s, the Irish secret society, “The Molly Maguires,” had a strong foothold in Centralia, among many other mining towns across Pennsylvania. The Molly Maguires advocated for unionization of miners and improvement of wages and working conditions, often by violent means. Legend tells that the first Catholic priest to live in Centralia, Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott, who was famously assaulted by The Molly Maguires in 1869, cursed the land of Centralia, swearing that St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church would be the last structure to remain standing in the town.
There is some dispute over how the fire started, but on May 27th, 1962, a fire in the newly-built Centralia landfill was not properly extinguished, and was able to breach the landfill’s fireproof barrier, which had gone unmaintained by the borough responsible for its installation, expansion, and maintenance. As the landfill had been haphazardly dug out of an old coal strip mine, the fire easily accessed veins of coal the strip mine and its underground tunnels had been cut through. In such a coal-rich area, the interconnected veins quickly ignited and spread the smoldering blaze underground across the entire town of Centralia, and into neighboring (and ironically named) Byrnesville.
The Centralia Council mailed the Lehigh Valley Coal Company a letter serving as a legal notice of the fire, however attempted to cover up the fire’s cause in hopes to avoid liability and garner remediation funding and efforts from the Lehigh Valley Coal Company; they described the fire’s cause as “of unknown origin during a period of unusually hot weather.” Tests of the smoke now emanating from cracks in the ground around the landfill quickly indicated carbon monoxide concentrations typical of coal fires, and by August 9th, with still no remediation efforts having been made, lethal levels of carbon monoxide were detected in active coal mines, permanently ending coal mining operations in Centralia the next day; a fatal blow to the town’s lifeblood industry.
Numerous efforts to halt the fire were made in the remaining months of 1962 and into 1963, including digging up projected routes of the blaze, building perimeters around the burning veins, and pumping a slurry of rock and water into burning zones. All efforts failed, due to inadequate funding, scope of work, and haste, with some efforts exacerbating the subterranean fire by introducing oxygen fueling the fire and accelerating its spread.
The fire wasn’t unbeknownst to residents, however the town council of Centralia continued to downplay the fire’s severity until the 1980s, when the problem became too large to proverbially bury any longer. In 1979 John Coddington, then-mayor of Centralia, discovered that the gasoline in the thank beneath the gas station he owned was 172°F (77.8°C). In 1980, Centralia residents began suffering the health effects of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide poisoning. Famously, on Valentine’s Day, 1981, 12-year-old Todd Domboski fell through a sinkhole into a former mineshaft that had been overcome by the underground fire. Miraculously, Domboski held onto a root and was pulled to safety out of the muddy pit of steam and lethal levels of carbon monoxide by his cousin Eric Wolfgang. It just so happened that when the incident occurred, state officials were meeting with Centralia borough-members, and the state officials witnessed the risks the ever-expanding fire posed to residents.
This would be a turning-point in Centralia’s history, and in 1984 the United States Congress allocated $42 million (equivalent to $105 million in 2020) to relocate residents of Centralia, and neighboring Byrnesville. Most residents took the buyouts and escaped the fire hazard, starting new lives elsewhere in the state and country, but those few that remained would be the last to inhabit the town, as in 1992 Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey condemned all buildings and enacted eminent domain on all properties within Centralia. In 1996 the neighboring logging town of Byrnesville, which also was forced to be abandoned due to the spread of Centralia’s burning coal veins, was flattened, with only a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary remaining. The USPS revoked Centralia’s ZIP code, 17927, in 2002, and in 2009, Governor Ed Rendell formally evicted the few remaining residents. By 2013 only 7 residents remained in 2013, and after numerous legal battles, by agreement with the state of Pennsylvania, these remaining individuals are allowed to live out the rest of their lives in Centralia, and their property will be forfeited via eminent domain upon moving or their death. In 2020, only 5 of these residents remain.
Today, Centralia is a ghost-town. Some days one can spot puffs of smoke, steam, and carbon monoxide escaping from cracks and collapsed pits in the town. Most people don’t even know the town once existed, as they drive through on PA Route 61; there are no signs, and almost no buildings remaining - just a small maze of potholed roads with overgrown dirt lots and crumbling foundations if you take the right unmarked turnoff from Route 61.
The only indication that something might be off while driving by Centralia is the chicane Route 61 makes, which is actually a 1mi detour that was built in the 1990s to bypass a burning coal vein beneath the road threatening its collapse. In the mid-2000s this abandoned ¾mi stretch of road began accumulating graffiti, that pace of which picked up in 2007 following the release of the Silent Hill movie based of the eponymous video game which was modeled on Centralia’s disastrous history. This colorful stretch of Route 61 became known as The Graffiti Highway, and was a popular, if not questionably illegal, destination for seekers of oddities and offbeat landmarks.
Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott’s curse may prove true.
The Graffiti Highway
Located adjacent the Centralia cemetery, The Graffiti Highway’s entire ¾mi of pavement and surrounding guardrail was eventually totally covered in spray painted messages and art by visitors leaving their marks to commemorate their visit. My friend and I have wanted to visit for years, to see the spooky, post-apocalyptic ruins of Centralia, and take in the vibrance of The Graffiti Highway; I ideally would have liked to shoot some kind of edgy fashion or car shoot there, as many people have used the splotched terrain as a vivid, polychromatic backdrop.
Sadly, The Graffiti Highway is another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic, as rowdy visitors looking for an escape from lockdown boredom were holding parties and bonfires at the offbeat destination. Pagnotti Enterprises, a Pennsylvania mining company that owns the land, decided they didn’t want the liability, and sought to discourage visitors by covering the highway with 400 loads of dirt to bury the Graffiti Highway, rather than the more appropriate route of preserving it as a designated historic site. This effort was quick, but only time will tell how successful it was; the resulting loss is less boring-dirtpile and more dirtbikers’ paradise.
My friend and I knew we’d missed finally seeing the Highway in its full glory by a mere few months, but we still wanted to see what Centralia is all about - what collector of oddities, visitor of haunted graveyards and ghost-towns, and reader of Atlas Obscura wouldn’t want to experience such a place for themselves? Alongside my camera gear and car detailing bucket, I brought my Polaroid knowing the bright colors, if we found any, would show up great on film.
After our circuitous cruise to Centralia, with a handful of stops, and even purposely driving the wrong direction for quite a few miles in the pursuit of good roads, we arrived in Centralia… but not before missing the turn off Route 61 like I mentioned is so easy to miss - it’s basically a dirt road that looks like it leads nowhere. But after turning off Route 61 you know you’re in the right place because tags start populating even the roads leading into what was once the heart of Centralia, which is just overgrown as nature is already reclaiming the little left of the town. We parked on a dirt road leading into Odd Fellows Cemetery, which borders the tract where the fire originated; although its gate was open, we didn’t enter not knowing who technically owned it, nor who monitored the large security camera aimed at its entrance. Not far from our cars was a monitoring station, with the message carved into its concrete base: DO NOT BACK OVER WITH TOUR BUS.
After a little moseying around, we finally found a trail that led to The Graffiti Highway - nature is quickly taking back the entire area, so it was easy to get turned around without aiming yourself with a compass and satellite imagery. Also, just follow the trail of dicks; phallic tags and the occasional pair of boobies increasingly blazed the trail until you reach an intersection with a collapsed coal vein one one side and the Highway down a steep embankment on the other. We steered very clear of the collapsed fire vent, which just looked like a big sinkhole, not wanting to become another Todd Domboski or succumb to invisible and odorless carbon monoxide, and slid down the embankment to The Graffiti Highway’s clearing of trees.
To our delight, there were still some spots of the Highway that were left uncovered by the dirt mounts. But it was impressive to see such an expanse of such uniform hills spanning such a distance; it elicited the sense of moguls on a piste, but dirt instead of snow - a dirtbiker’s paradise. Something that was very striking, however, was the amount of raw, unburnt coal present and loosely floating atop the piles of dirt and rock; for a bunch of material excavated from the “depleted and burnt up” section of the original fire, there sure was an abundance of unspent fuel dumped upon this known tract of fire. Some coal was definitely burnt, and it would break apart under your feet or crumble in your fingers, whereas unspent coal, while still fragile, holds its form and has a sheen across its surface. Rocks were tagged with aliens, the unofficial mascot (and visitor???) of Centralia, along with hearts, stars, and all-seeing eyes.
F-Type Car Cruise
Once we’d seen most of The Graffiti Highway (we only hiked about half of it), we scampered back up the slippery hill, passed the cemetery, and took a look over the hill down into the former site of the landfill, where Centralia’s fire first began almost 60 years ago. There wasn’t much to see, so we didn’t bother more than peering down, as a couple we ran into confirmed there was nothing of value down there as they exited past us. A very muddy pickup and a few ATVers also passed by on one of the numerous dirt roads around the cemetery and the Highway; we were surprised that we encountered nobody on The Graffiti Highway itself, eventhough we heard ATVs and dirtbikes buzzing around while we explored.
The sun was setting, and after taking a couple photos where we initially parked, we moved on to find some graffiti on nearby roads to grab some tagged car pictures. Centralia is dirt and decay, so while it’s not glamorous, there is beauty in dilapidation and decay. In between pictures, we looked around the road to see what was nearby - some of the remaining slab foundations are so overgrown you trip onto them before you spot it. One large one seemed to be an old gas station by its layout; I can’t help but wonder if it’s the spot where John Coddington discovered his gasoline stored at almost boiling temperatures. Once we lost the good light, we called it a day and cruised away with new memories - I didn’t bring lights, and reader beware, Centralia isn’t the safest in way of crime in addition to land hazard.
I treasured my time in Centralia, and while I’m sad I never got to see it in its vivid prime, I’m still glad I got to visit before even more of the eerie ghost-town disappears. I’ve been absolutely swamped with photoshoots and their resulting edits this Fall, and to concentrate I’ve been delving into new podcasts. One I immediately latched onto is The Goth Librarian Podcast; it has everything I love: obscura, oddities, crime, scandal, mystery, medical madness, and hands-down the coolest theme music ever. I’m so sad it ended last year after only 37 episodes due to the amount of work behind it being non-compensated (no sponsors). I finished editing the photos from this fun trip months ago this Summer; they’ve been sitting waiting for me to compose this fitting history of Centralia. So I’ve been working on edits of a lot of other photoshoots since then, but color me delighted when I got to Episode 035: Ghost Towns which discussed Centralia, PA, the historic fire, and the resulting Graffiti Highway phenomenon. Eventhough The Goth Librarian Podcast seems to have also been another victim of the pandemic (the host is fine, don’t worry; just the show), I can’t recommend listening to it enough. With only 37 episodes, it only took me a few days to work my way through from beginning to end, it introduced me to new occurrences of history, refreshed me on numerous tales I already knew of, and gave me a few new museums to add to my list to visit. Give the episode containing the story of Centralia and other ghost towns a listen here.
