Has anyone ever visited the (almost) abandoned town of Centralia, PA?

[neutron star]

I went to Centralia on Saturday. We got there late in the afternoon, so we didn't have much time to go exploring.

Centralia, in case you've never heard of it, is a virtual ghost town due to an underground mine fire that's been burning for 45 years.

There are huge cracks on the only cement road we could find, and that road was blocked off by a large mound of dirt. The only traffic we saw consisted of a few teenagers on ATVs.

We did come across one of the fifteen residents of the town (Wikipedia says that there are nine, though I think I'd trust a permanent resident over them), but he wasn't very forthcoming with information.

Due to the fire, the aforementioned cracks in the road constantly spewed smoke into the air. There are also several dirt roads, but we didn't have time to follow all of them since we were on foot.

As it was getting dark, we walked out on some trails in the woods and found even more smoke venting from the ground. Crazy stuff!

Except for a rather normal-looking cemetary and the house of the one elderly resident we spoke to, however, we found few things of interest.

In 1981, the town boasted a population of 1,000. Now, however, it seems to have been erased from the Earth, at least from what we could find. We didn't come across even the remains of a single other house.

Has anyone else ever been there? If so, what was the experience like for you, and were you able to find any kind of decent map of the borough?

[Hey, It's That Guy!]

I haven't been there, but it sounds fascinatingly creepy. The haunted town of Silent Hill, West Virginia in the Silent Hill movie was based on Centralia.

[danceswithcats]

My last visit there was in the mid/late 1980s to the Bank of PA branch on the main drag. The town was well on the way to being erased then. Houses which had been purchased and demolished were empty lots, overgrown and untended, sitting in stark contrast to those of stalwart inhabitants who refused to leave, their properties as neat and trimmed as they had been for decades.

The town behaves as a tired and lame elder who will not go to "the home", preferring to maintain independence, rather than being taken care of, despite its closeness to death. That spirit in town was palpable.

[hocow]

I actually live about 25 minutes away from Centralia, so I've been there many times. Route 61 was actually diverted due to the original road developing cracks. I can remember when I was a kid, being in the car and looking a few feet off the road into the trees where smoke was rising constantly. The trees all had white bark, very creepy indeed. You can still see the smoke rising in various places. It's very noticible in the winter by the cemetary.

A word of caution: I don't recommend exploring the dirt roads too much. It's very possible to end up walking over very unstable land. Sinkholes do exist.

Here's some YouTube vids showing the town, if anyone is interested.

ETA: the first video in that link shows where 61 was diverted about 40 seconds into it. You'll see a yellow arrow, which stands directly in front of the old road.

[Foldup Rabbit]

The Wikipedia Page for Centralia is all right, and it contains several links that are pretty interesting. I first became interested in it after reading about it in a Bill Bryson book. I've never been, but I always thought it would be sort of dangerous to just go tromping around there. Are there any trails or anything that are deemed 'safe'?

[Zabali_Clawbane]

I doubt it, at least not from what I have read so far on this Smithsonian article, I'm on page four now.

[Promethea]

The travel writer Bill Bryson visits Centralia in his book "A walk in the woods", an account of hiking part of the Appalachian trail. Very atmoshperic and full of haunting little details such as the driveways to houses that are no longer there.

[LSLGuy]

damninteresting.com also has an interesting writeup.