Disaster Touring in Centralia, PA

[canyonwalker]

May Family Visit Travelog #14
Centralia, PA · Tue 26 May 2026. 6:30pm.

Earlier today while we were driving to Ricketts Glen State Park I quipped to Hawk, "I'm curious to visit Centralia. How far off our route is it?" It turns out it's closer than I thought. It's not on the fastest route home, but detouring through the town adds only 5 minutes to the drive.

"Why do you care about visiting a town with a population of just 5 people?" you may ask. Ah, there's significance behind that tiny population. And I don't mean numerology.

An Underground Fire

Decades ago Centralia was yet-another small town in the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania. It was like many of the small towns we drove through on the way here— with houses and businesses. It was surprising to see how many people still live in those 100-year-old little towns, BTW. But Centralia is almost a ghost town. It's because in 1962 a fire started burning in an underground coal mine. The fire could not be put out. The fire has never been put out. It's been burning now for at least 64 years!

In 1983-84 the federal government approved a buy-out for Centralia residents. Many took it and left. By 1990 the census recorded just 63 residents left— down from approximately 2,000 before the fire. In 1992 the governor of Pennsylvania used the power of eminent domain to condemn the buildings in town. An agreement was made with a few hold-outs to remain in their houses until their death. The 2020 census shows an official population of just 5 people.

Centralia isn't much in the news anymore. I remember it from being a news item back in the late 1980s. Presumably it stopped being as newsworthy once nearly everybody was moved out.

What We Saw

I wasn't sure what to expect in Centralia. Oh, I had some fanciful notions, like smoldering ruins and smoke venting from ruptures in the ground. Hawk mentioned online descriptions of steam vents visible in a cemetery. Imagine how metal that would be... walking through a cemetery with acrid smoke rising around the graves as if from the fires of hell burning beneath them. 🔥🪦💀

Alas there was nothing like that. We arrived in Centralia to find... almost nothing. Old streets were laid out in a grid, but along those streets was nothing. There were no houses, just empty lots now overgrown with trees. Evidently the houses were flattened years ago, flattened and the debris removed. The tracts where buildings once stood have already returned to nature.

Amid the empty blocks we did see two houses still standing. Both had signs of habitation— specifically, cars and trucks built within the past 5-10 years. And judging by the number of such vehicles there seemed to be a lot more than 5 people in town.

We did check out those cemeteries, BTW. We even walked through two of them (respectfully!) that were open to visitors. They just look like normal cemeteries. They're even well-maintained, with fresh flags put out by many of the graves. And there was no smoke.

Comments

[rimrunner]

I'd heard of Centralia because there's a city of the same name in Washington; my bestie lives there. Other than that its only real distinction is being halfway between Seattle and Portland, though it also used to be a major meeting point for railways.

It also was severely impacted by fire, kind of; the Mount St Helens eruption seriously damaged the local economy. Not to the point of only five people living there, though.