Copyright Business Insider
Founded in 1866 by mining engineer Alexander Rae, Centralia is a borough in the northeastern Pennsylvania mountains. Shortly after the construction of the Mine Run Railroad in 1854, which transported coal out of the valley and connected the small town to the region, Centralia became a mining hub, reaching its highest population of 2,761 in 1890, per US Census data. Since 2002, the town has continued to exist without a ZIP code after the US Postal Service revoked its former code, 17927. Those who still remain in the town need to have post boxes in nearby towns to receive mail and often struggle to get necessities like food or checks delivered, the son of a resident told Cracked in 2017. The fire underneath Centralia began in 1962, and has been burning in the abandoned underground coal mines that sprawl underneath the then-town. There is no confirmed cause of ignition. In the decades after, frustration boiled among residents after a joint state and federal mission to put out the flames failed. In 1981, the government began assisting families to relocate after $3.5 million in efforts to put out the fire failed, The New York Times reported at the time. The town's ground is dotted with sinkholes and ash piles, which blend in with the surrounding nature and can cause injury to humans and animals. Animals who get stuck in the sinkholes often die from starvation or suffocation thanks to the smoke from underground. After a child who fell into a sinkhole nearly died in 1981, some residents saw the incident as a wake-up call and left the town. In 1983, after efforts to put out the fire failed, the US government approved $42 million to buy residents' homes and relocate them, per the BBC. As residents left, buildings were demolished, roads were left to deteriorate, and the branch of Route 61 that ran through the town was permanently closed and diverted around the town once it became too expensive to repair. In a 2006 interview with the Christian Science Monitor, then-90-year-old Lamar Mervine, who was at one point the mayor of the town, spoke about how he and his wife wanted to stay in the town, even as the state sought to acquire the property. "This is the only home I've ever owned, and I want to keep it," he said. Even after Mervine's death in 2010 — two years after his wife, Lanna — their house, where their son, Harold Mervine, still lives, is one of the very few remaining in Centralia. In the following decades, as the government bought out most residents and seized their homes through eminent domain, a small group fought to stay in the burning town. In the 1990s, after their homes were seized, a handful of strong-willed residents filed a federal lawsuit accusing the government of wanting the town's coal and claiming that the parts of the town where they lived were safe to stay in, the Associated Press reported. In 2013, the remaining residents won the right to stay in the town until they die. A settlement gave them ownership of their properties until their deaths and included a $349,500 payout. The son of former mayor Lamar Mervine is one of the current residents. Harold Mervine lives in the same house his grandfather built almost 100 years ago, where his father fought to stay. Even 63 years after the fire started, smoke continues to rise from the cracks in the roads and holes in the ground. The fire, which reaches temperatures of up to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, spans over 350 acres, burning 300 to 400 feet beneath the surface, Reuters reported in 2008. Officials have estimated that the fire, which proved too expensive to extinguish, could keep burning for another 100 years. One of the town's remaining residents told Cracked that tourists, who have begun visiting the eerie and desolate town as a novelty travel spot — especially since the release of the 2006 horror film "Silent Hill," which was inspired by the town — cause a lot of frustration for those who stayed behind. "They'll walk on lawns and property freely, thinking it's abandoned. They'll always be asking, 'Why do you live here?' They dump trash everywhere ... The worst are the tourists who leave graffiti." He said some tourists even harm residents' property. "For a souvenir, like they wanted a piece of the Lord's cross. Chip chip chip, and they took a part of my stairs," he said. In 2014, after water damage was detected in a time capsule that had been buried in 1966, the town opened its contents, two years earlier than originally scheduled. Inside, contents like books, photos, and paper documents were found destroyed by the water. Organizers aimed to return all items to any living donors or their children, but the premature opening upset some current and former residents, who saw the capsule's yard marker as one of the remaining artifacts from the town that no longer was, and they had hoped the scheduled opening would reunite former neighbors. "It held great meaning to those Centralians still alive," a former resident who grew up in the town told Reuters in 2014. "Many were looking forward to its opening in 2016. It was to be a reunion of sorts." "People have called it a ghost town, but I look at it as a town that's now full of trees instead of people," one resident told Reuters in 2008. "And truth is, I'd rather have trees than people." Editor's note: A version of this story was first published in November 2011. It was most recently updated in November 2025. Dina Spector and Sinéad Baker contributed to earlier versions of this story.
