There are a lot of stories of bizarre incidents in small towns, incidents that I’m very familiar with. One of the most bizarre incidents came with the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. This is gonna be fun.

The early history of Centralia existing comes with the purchase of what is now the Columbia County region from the indigenous peoples in 1749. While I was unable to find out which peoples lost their land, I was able to find out that they gained 500 pounds sterling, or around 16,000 dollars today. Centralia’s location was left alone until 21 years later, when the land was surveyed. Eventually, the beginnings of what is known now as PA route 61 ran through this, as part of the road from Reading to Fort Augusta.

In 1793, Robert Morris, one of the Founding Fathers and a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, bought part of the land in the area. This was part of his massively expanding real estate empire, which collapsed in a few years when he went bankrupt. French Slaver Stephen Girard, who would later save the United States from financial collapse during the war of 1812, purchased the land for 30,000 dollars, or 622,000 today.

The boost for Centralia would not come until the finding of the coal. The land soon to become Centralia sat upon a massive anthracite deposit. Even though this was known, it took a while for people to arrive there. The origins of the town came with the creation of a Tavern. The area, known as Bull’s Head, was bought in 1842 by the Locust Mountain Coal and Iron company. The village they built there for the miners, designed by Alexander Rea, was originally to be named Centerville, but because that already existed In Pennsylvania, Centralia was the name in the end.

The first mines in the area were built in 1856, and were serviced by the Mine Run railroad. This railroad was very small, and was overshadowed by the arrival of the Lehigh and Mahoney branch of the venerable Lehigh Valley Railroad.

The early years of Centralia were filled with strife. The region was a hotbed for the Molly Maguires, an Irish coal miner activist group. In 1868, a group of them attacked the founder of the town, Alexander Rea, and killed him. The violence died down during the 1870s with the end of the Maguires. This ties into a local legend about the first Catholic priest to live in Centralia, Daniel McDermott. The legend goes that he cursed the land after being assaulted by miners, and claimed that the Ignatius Church would be the only building standing in the end.

The town’s coal mining operations help me it expand. It peaked in 1890, with a population of 2,671. It had seven churches, five hotels, twenty seven saloons, a pair of theaters, a post office, a bank, and 14 separate goods stores. This was a town that seemed to be growing into an economic powerhouse. Until it wasn’t.

The arrival of the First World War meant that coal production slowed as the young men of Centralia were sent to France. When they returned, and began settling back into their jobs, coal wasn’t relevant anymore. Oil was becoming a better and cheaper source of energy. Things got even worse with the stock market crash, which resulted in five mines in the area being closed. Desperate for money, many resorted to bootleg mining, in which unsafe methods were used, such as mining supportive coal pillars. This weakened the overall mine structures in Centralia, something with horrible consequences.

The town stagnated during the 30’s and 40’s, and the only thing of note during this time was a plane crash in 1948 that took the lives of 43 people. With coal mining falling apart as an industry, it seemed the town was doomed to the fate of all boom towns, the fate of stagnating into nothing. That wasn’t the way Centralia went out, however.

On May 7th, 1962, the town council met to discuss the upcoming Memorial Day, as well as the town landfill. The landfill, situated in an abandoned mining pit, was hazardous. This is where several theories emerge. There isn’t a conclusive cause for the events that occured, but I will go with the most likely option. The council, off the record, approved burning the landfill. This wasn’t legal, but it is the most likely option.

May 27, 1962, was the day that the landfill fire started. Using the fire to burn away waste, the fire department then attempted to put the fire out. This wasn’t possible at that stage. The burning trash pit was on top of layers of old mine shafts, and the anthracite inside was now on fire. During the summer, the situation got worse. The smell was horrible, and the coal was emitting toxic amounts of Carbon Monoxide. Ground fissures were beginning to form around the pit, and the town was concerned. Attempts from mining groups to stop the fire or to block it were unsuccessful, and over the years, the fire kept spreading under the town. Residents were complaining of headaches and nausea as the Carbon Monoxide levels got worse. It took until 1977, 15 years after the first fires started, for the state government to take action. By that point, it was pretty much too late.

The local gas station was the first indicator of the severity of the situation. It was forced to close in 1980 because the heat underneath it threatened to cause the underground tanks to explode. Those tanks had to be filled with water, and the business was done for. A near tragic incident occured on Valentine’s Day in 1981, when 12 year old Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole that opened underneath him containing toxic levels of Carbon Monoxide. He survived only by being able to hold onto a tree root until his cousin, barely older than him, pulled him out. Politicians began to scramble to fix the situation, but there was only two solutions. The first solution was to destroy the mine fire, which would result in most of the town being demolished. The second solution was to evacuate the town and let the fire burn out. The second option was taken. In 1992, Governor Casey had the land become state domain. A deal was made with the remaining residents that they were allowed to stay there for the rest of their lives. There weren’t that many residents by that point, anyways. Today, there are only five people living inside Centralia. It’s now a near ghost town, and once those 5 pass on, Centralia will die, the victim of the coal that built it.