Despite national attention, misconceptions, Centralia borough remains active
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL FILE - An occupied duplex on Myers Street in Centralia in 2018.
CENTRALIA, Columbia County – Abandoned.
Ghost town.
If you search “Centralia PA” on Google, these words and synonyms are prevalent, but in the small borough just over the county line, they’re untrue.
Since 2014, the “Centralia / Byrnesville PA” Facebook page has posted and shared items pertaining to the borough and nearby village of Byrnesville in Conyngham Township, both of which were largely razed in the state’s effort to limit the impacts and risks of the mine fire burning beneath the town on those who lived there.
“The town IS NOT COMPLETELY ABANDONED people still live here and watch everyday as visitors and locals destroy the town they lived in all their lives,” the page wrote on January 28.
The town is still home to about 10 people, making it the smallest municipality in the commonwealth. Its fire company, the Centralia Fire Company, designated Station 340 by Columbia County, is still active. According to call logs posted to the nearby Aristes Fire Company’s website, their engine and crew consistently respond to their calls to service.
The borough council continues to function. According to an audit report from the Pennsylvania Auditor General’s Office published last October, the borough spent about $8,500 in state liquid fuels money on winter road maintenance, street lighting, and maintenance and repair of roads.
Yet, still, articles are consistently published designating the borough as “America’s creepiest ghost town” or as one of “PA’s forgotten places.”
Visitors from near and far visit the borough and the abandoned stretch of PA Route 61, “Graffiti Highway,” in Conyngham Township, bringing either ATVs, spray paint cans, or both along.
Often, their spray paint cans are left behind there or in the borough, as are trash bags cinderblocks, tires, toilets, couches, and TV’s.
An annual clean-up hosted by the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation each October attempts to counter such activities. In 2019, the clean-up netted 300 tires, a dozen TVs, at least 50 bags of spray paint cans, and over 50 cubic yards of trash were collected.
“It’s not nearly as much as it’s been,” said Bobby Hughes, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, which hosts the clean-up, regarding the amount of trash found in October.
“We’re going to come after you,” he said, regarding dumpers in such areas.
In recent years, graffiti has spread to other areas of the borough, such as Laurel Street on the north end of town.
“The cemeteries are getting vandalized too, iron fences stolen,” the Centralia / Byrnesville PA page writes. “Please if you don’t have a family member or loved ones in them please stay out of them.”
The borough’s population peaked just shy of 2,500 in the 1940s census and, like most other municipalities in the region, began to decline steadily into the 1980s.
The mine fire is said to have begun in the 1960s, escalating into the 1980s, when the state began a voluntary relocation program in the town. Most of the 1,017 residents who lived there in 1980 moved by 1990, leaving 63 residents in town. Three years later, in 1993, the state began an attempt to force the rest to move.
A court battle ensued, reaching a resolution in 2013 which allows the remaining residents to stay for the remainder of their lives.
Several attempts to extinguish the fire were made in the early 1960s, each of which ran out of money and failed. Meanwhile, between 1945 and 1980, mine fires were successfully extinguished in several nearby communities, either through government assistance or by the coal company itself, according to a 1988 report from the U.S. Bureau of Mines.
Those nearby fires extinguished by the government include Mount Carmel, via three attempts in 1950, 1952, and 1967; Shenandoah – Kehley Run via excavation in 1969; Hazleton in 1969 via excavation; Coal Township in 1963 via a trench and isolation barrier; and Shamokin in 1951 via surface seal.
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