Driving Through PA's Ghost Town

(suggested background music pairing:  Life In A Northern Town; Dream Academy,1985)

A topic that has always fascinated me is the fate of the little town of Centralia, PA.  In short, Centralia is a ghost town set in the middle of PA's Coal Country.  Sometime back in the 1960’s, a fire started in an abandoned coal mine beneath town, and the fire has been burning ever since, closing in on 50 years.  As a result of the fire, and the dangerous conditions related to it, in the early 1980’s, the Commonwealth of PA began buying property to entice residents to move to a safer location.  For those who’ve refused, in the 1990’s, the Commonwealth began to attempt to force the remaining residents to leave.  I’ve posted a link to the Wikipedia page which goes into pretty good detail about the town, the fire, and the battles which ensued.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania

I first drove through Centralia on the way back from a family vacation (to Niagara Falls) around 1990. It was a normal-looking small coal-mining town, with a general store, a post office, houses, churches, etc.  I had known about the coal fire at that point, which is why I drove through the town (and it helps that the town is on a major road, PA Route 61, cutting a diagonal path from my hometown to the northern part of the state).   Since that first drive, I’ve been able to drive through the town on average once a year and sometimes twice.  My ex-wife’s relatives are in town just to the south, Ashland, PA .  Ashland is only 3 miles down the mountain from Centralia; the town is deemed safe but there are underlying fears about what may happen if the fire were to spread south.  My brother went to college at nearby Bloomsburg University, and the fastest way to get from home to there was to drive through Centralia.  And now that I travel from Western NY to my hometown once a month, every now and then I will take Route 61.  As I've driven through each time, I’ve noticed that more and more buildings disappeared.  The general store has been gone for a while, as are the churches.

I decided to drive through there today…a cold, rainy, gray day, which makes a perfectly dismal backdrop to view the town’s slow funeral march towards...disappearing.  What makes this darkly surreal, though, is not what is no longer there, but what still remains.  The original street layout is still intact, with stop signs at each intersection.  Curbs are visible as are sidewalks and walls, although all grown over.  A black cat ran across the street in front of my car.  There are a couple of cemeteries, still intact, the only memories of the former churches. And this time, I counted five houses, at least the ones I could see from Route 61.  That is all that is left, five lone structures, the last testament of people protecting what they consider home in spite of the (literal) flames of conflict around them.  

I’ll be honest, I would have left a long time ago, to live and fight, somewhere else, another day.  But I do take away two thoughts:

1. Home is where your heart is, and sometimes that can be a strong, strong feeling.  As we look at all the scenes coming from Japan, which brings us back to Hurricane Katrina, and other natural disasters, sometimes we wonder why people want to go back to a place like that after seeing their homes destroyed instantly.  And these people have watched their hometown get destroyed NOT in an instant, but slowly, very slowly, piece by piece and building by building, over 50 years.  I find that strong sense of home inspiring.  For them, to borrow the image from my hometown of Phoenixville, I hope the phoenix rises from the literal ashes surrounding them and rises above it all.
2. It is yet another example of a thought that echoes in my head every day:  everything can be taken away in an instant; life as you know it can change in the blink of an eye, or in the spark of a fire. It is a sad yet inspiring reminder of the importance of truly living life, appreciating and cherish each single moment we have.     

Below are two sets of pictures, one set I took in 2005 and the other I took today. 

Warning sign, 2005 (not there today)

Bench with 17927 zip code, 2005.  The zip code was revoked by the USPS in 2002.  Bench not there today.

Rt 61, 2005

Smoke from fire, 2005.

Smoke from fire, 2005.

Smoke from fire, and houses from 2005, not there today.

Smoke from fire and fog, Winter 2011

Deserted street, Winter 2011.

Deserted street, Winter 2011

One of five houses left, Winter 2011

Deserted street, Summer 2012

Abandoned Rt 61; buckled due to heat from fire below

Abandoned Rt 61, Summer 2012