Graffiti Highway no more: impromptu, unofficial tourist attraction to be covered
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - A Fox Coal Company tri-axle dumps its load on Graffiti Highway in Conyngham Township, Columbia County Monday afternoon.
CENTRALIA, Columbia County – An impromptu and unofficial tourist attraction just over the Schuylkill County line will be no more by the end of the week.
Fox Coal Company, of Mount Carmel, was hired by the Graffiti Highway’s owner, Pagnotti Enterprises, of Wilkes-Barre, to cover the road with backfill. The project began Monday morning.
“We were hired by the landowner to haul approximately 400 loads of dirt to cover the road,” said Vince Guarna, owner of Fox Coal Company.
Tri-axles were in-and-out of the site, a three-quarter mile stretch of four-lane road which served as PA Route 61 until the 1990s.
Guarna said the project will take about three or four days. He said trees and grass will be planted at the site as well.
Increased hazardous activity at the site, including a bonfire and injuries at the site, as well as increased vandalism in the borough of Centralia itself, led to the project, Guarna said.
“The trespassers here, they’re doing a lot of damage up in town, the cemeteries are getting vandalized,” Guarna said.
Guarna said that, in the morning, about 50 people were at the highway.
State troopers from the Bloomsburg barracks and Ashland Police secured the site for most of the day, keeping most onlookers away. Troopers patrolled the remainder of the town as well.
Guarna escorted the Sentinel‘s reporter down the highway to the site, where dozens of dirt piles, in rows of three, were already dumped as of 2:00pm.
Centralia borough personnel were at the northern entrance to the site installing no parking signs.
Despite Governor Tom Wolf’s stay-at-home order regarding the coronavirus pandemic, upwards of 100 people per day have taken to the abandoned stretch of highway in the past few weeks, prompting the Aristes Fire Company, which responds to the highway, to call out the situation via Facebook.
They listed four concerns with the crowds:
- “It forces our volunteers to be deployed for a response that should not happen. It is dry out with a breeze/wind, there is no outdoor burning allowed in Conyngham Twp unless it is on an approved burning receptacle and the land being used is not owned by the people who are burning on it.
- With the current status of the world and the COVID19 pandemic having groups of 30+ are not to occur and again our volunteers could be exposed to such. There were license plates leaving the area from New York, New Jersey and other areas that have a much higher positive testing rate then our area.
- This land is posted “NO TRESPASSING” by the land owner.
- The addition of alcohol to the situation increases the likelihood of a negative outcome in practically every way possible. Several bystanders leaving the area said they were almost struck by ATVs and/or side-x-sides as they walked with several stating the occupants of the machines had open containers of alcoholic beverages in their possession.”
Though crowds were kept to a minimum Monday, as soon as state troopers left the upper entrance to the highway. two groups of about seven onlookers entered as the Sentinel’s reporter left.
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