Centralia, Pennsylvania

• 1. Introduction

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  Centralia, Pennsylvania sits in Columbia County as the least-populated municipality in the entire state, home to just five residents as of 2020. Beneath its cracked streets and overgrown lots, a coal mine fire has been burning since 1962 - and experts say it will likely keep burning for another 250 years. What happened to a town that once had seven churches, five hotels, and 27 saloons? How did a community of nearly 1,000 people in 1980 dwindle to a handful of holdouts, their homes condemned by the state under eminent domain? And what does it mean to refuse to leave a place that the ground itself is trying to swallow?

• 2. Founding and Fortune

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  In 1749, several Native American tribes sold much of the land in Northeastern Pennsylvania, including the Centralia valley, to colonial agents for £500. The area changed hands dramatically over the following decades. In 1793, Robert Morris, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, acquired a third of the valley's land. When Morris declared bankruptcy in 1798, the land passed to the Bank of the United States.

  A Philadelphia-based sea captain and banker named Stephen Girard, born in France, then purchased Morris's lands for $30,000, picking up 68 additional tracts east of Morris's holdings. Girard had heard there was anthracite coal in the region, and he was right. It was a discovery that would shape everything that followed.

  The town itself took shape in the 1840s when a mining engineer named Alexander Rae moved his family in and began laying out streets and lots. Rae first named the settlement Centreville, but in 1865 he changed it to Centralia because the U.S. Post Office already had a Centreville in Schuylkill County. By 1866, Centralia was incorporated as a borough, with the anthracite coal industry as its principal employer.

  The town's first two mines, the Locust Run Mine and the Coal Ridge Mine, opened in 1856. The Hazeldell Colliery followed in 1860, the Centralia Mine in 1862, and the Continental Mine in 1863 - the last of these located on Stephen Girard's former estate. A railroad branch reached Centralia in 1865, unlocking coal sales to markets in eastern Pennsylvania and fueling rapid growth.

• 3. Violence and Curses

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  Alexander Rae, the man who named the town and designed its streets, was murdered in his buggy on the 17th of October 1868, during a trip between Centralia and Mount Carmel. Members of the Molly Maguires, a secretive organization operating within the anthracite coal region, were responsible. Three men were eventually convicted and hanged in Bloomsburg, the county seat, on the 25th of March 1878.

  Centralia was a hotbed of Molly Maguires activity during the 1860s. The group aimed to organize mineworkers and improve wages and conditions, but their methods included arson and murder. Their most prominent leaders were hanged in 1877, ending their campaign of violence. Local legend holds that some of their descendants still lived in Centralia as recently as the 1980s.

  The violence also produced one of the town's most enduring legends. Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott, the first Roman Catholic priest to call Centralia home, was assaulted by three members of the Maguires in 1869. According to local legend, he cursed the land in retaliation, saying there would come a day when St. Ignatius Roman Catholic Church would be the only structure left standing in Centralia. Whether prophecy or coincidence, that prediction would edge closer to reality with every passing decade.

• 4. Peak and Decline

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  Federal census records show Centralia reached its maximum population of 2,761 in 1890. At that peak, the town supported seven churches, five hotels, 27 saloons, two theaters, a bank, a post office, and 14 general and grocery stores. Thirty-seven years after that peak, anthracite coal production in Pennsylvania reached its own high point before beginning a long descent.

  World War I accelerated the town's economic erosion, as many young miners from Centralia enlisted in the military. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 delivered a more decisive blow: the Lehigh Valley Coal Company closed five of its Centralia-local mines. Bootleg miners continued to work several of the idle shafts, using a technique called "pillar-robbing" where they extracted coal from the structural pillars left in mines to support the roof. The resulting collapses of idle mines would later complicate every effort to stop the underground fire.

  In 1950, Centralia Council acquired the rights to all anthracite coal beneath the borough through a state law passed the previous year. The federal census that year counted 1,986 residents. Coal mining in Centralia continued through the early 1960s before most companies shut down. By 1980, the population had fallen to 1,012, with another 500 or 600 living nearby. Rail service had ended in 1966, and the town still operated its own school district and two Catholic parochial schools.

• 5. The Fire Below

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  On the 27th of May 1962, volunteer firefighters hired by the Centralia Borough Council set the town landfill alight, as they had done in previous years before Memorial Day. The landfill sat in an abandoned strip-mine pit next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery, just outside the borough limits. Unlike prior years, this time the fire was not fully extinguished. An unsealed opening in the pit allowed it to find its way into the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath the town.

  Analysts still disagree on the precise trigger. David Dekok, author of Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire, concluded it started with that landfill cleanup. Other sources point to the previous day, when a trash hauler may have dumped hot ash or coal discards into the open pit. A separate theory traces the fire to the Bast Colliery fire of 1932, which may never have been fully extinguished. A miner named Frank Jurgill Sr. disputes that last theory, noting that he and his brother operated a bootleg mine near the landfill from 1960 to 1962 without encountering the noxious gases that would have filled the tunnels if a fire was already present.

  The borough, by law, was responsible for installing a fire-resistant clay barrier between each layer of the landfill. It had fallen behind schedule, leaving that barrier incomplete. Hot coals penetrated the coal seam underneath the pit, and the subterranean fire spread through passageways that the bootleg pillar-robbing had weakened and multiplied. Efforts to seal off the abandoned mines kept running into those collapsed areas.

• 6. Sinkhole and Exodus

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  For years the fire smoldered largely out of sight. In 1979, locals got their first startling measurement of the problem when a gas-station owner and then-mayor named John Coddington inserted a dipstick into one of his underground fuel tanks to check the level. When he withdrew it, the stick felt hot. He lowered a thermometer into the tank on a string and discovered the gasoline inside had reached 172 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Statewide attention intensified sharply on the 14th of February 1981, when a 12-year-old named Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole that opened without warning beneath his feet in his grandmother's backyard. The hole was four feet wide and 150 feet deep. Domboski saved himself by grabbing a tree root. His 14-year-old cousin, Eric Wolfgang, pulled him out. Steam rising from the hole was tested and found to carry a lethal level of carbon monoxide. U.S. Representative James Nelligan and Governor Dick Thornburgh were visiting the town that same day to assess the situation.

  Even then, Centralia's residents remained deeply divided. A study identified at least six community groups, each organized around different interpretations of how serious the danger actually was. In 1983, the U.S. Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation. Nearly all residents accepted the government's buyout. More than 1,000 people moved out, and 500 structures were demolished. By 1990, the census counted just 63 residents remaining.

  In 1992, Governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain on all property in the borough. A subsequent legal challenge by residents failed. In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service discontinued Centralia's ZIP code, 17927. The fire had also spread beneath the nearby village of Byrnesville to the south, forcing that community to be abandoned as well.

• 7. The Holdouts

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  After Governor Ed Rendell began the formal eviction of remaining residents in 2009, only a handful refused to leave. Residents John Comarnisky and John Lokitis, Jr., were evicted in May and July of that year. In May 2009, those still remaining mounted another legal effort to reverse the 1992 eminent domain claim, which a federal judge refused to block in March 2011.

  In February 2012, the Commonwealth Court ruled that a condemnation could not be set aside simply because its original purpose had shifted. Seven residents, including the borough council president, had argued that the underground fire had moved away and that Centralia's air quality matched that of Lancaster. The court was not persuaded.

  In October 2013, the remaining seven residents settled their lawsuit. They received $218,000 in compensation for the value of their homes, along with $131,500 to settle additional claims. Crucially, they also won the right to remain in their homes for the rest of their lives. After each death, the rights to that person's house revert to the state through eminent domain. By 2020, five residents remained.

  Several current and former residents have long maintained that the state's eminent domain action was not purely about safety. They believe it was a plot to seize the mineral rights to the anthracite coal still beneath the borough. Residents have placed its value in the hundreds of millions of dollars, though the exact amount of recoverable coal is unknown.

• 8. What Remains

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  Pennsylvania Route 61, once the main road through Centralia, was repaired several times before being permanently closed. Steam and smoke cracked its pavement repeatedly. A former detour became the permanent replacement route in 1993. The damaged original stretch was abandoned and became known as Graffiti Highway, drawing visitors for decades. In April 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the property's owners covered the highway under several hundred mounds of dirt, ending that chapter.

  The Ukrainian Catholic church, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, still holds weekly Sunday services and draws worshippers from surrounding towns, including former Centralia residents. A geological survey found solid rock rather than coal beneath the church, meaning it faces no risk of collapse from the fire. The town's four cemeteries are maintained in good condition.

  The Centralia Municipal Building still stands, hosting the annual Centralia Cleanup Day. Volunteers planted 250 apple trees around the town in April 2021 to restore its ecosystem. A borough council still holds regular meetings. Its highest reported bill came from PPL Electric Utilities at $92, and the budget was described as in the black.

  In October 2014, after someone had tried to steal it the previous May, the town's residents and former residents opened a time capsule buried in 1966, two years ahead of its scheduled 2016 opening. Inside the footlocker-sized container, which had filled with about 12 inches of water, they found a miner's helmet, a miner's lamp, some coal, a Bible, local souvenirs, and a pair of bloomers signed by the men of Centralia in 1966 - a small, damp archive of a town that once was.