While there is some disagreement as to how the fire started, a likely theory is that in May 1962 Centralia, Pennsylvania’s firefighters, as they had done every year, set a controlled fire at the town’s landfill. In recent years the landfill had been moved to the site of an abandoned strip mine next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery. On May 27, 1962 the five firefighters set a controlled fire at the dump and allowed it to burn for some time, but unlike in previous years the fire was not fully extinguished. An unsealed pit in the abandoned strip mine allowed the fire to enter the labyrinth of abandoned mines the small borough nestled in the Appalachian foothills sits upon. The borough, by law, was obligated to install a fire-resistant clay barrier between each layer, but the project had fallen behind schedule and went uncompleted.
By 1979 a local gas station owner measured the temperature of the fuel in his underground tank at 172 degrees. In 1981 a 12-year-old boy standing in his backyard was sucked into a 4-foot wide, 150-feet deep sink hole that opened suddenly beneath his feet. Though the boy was rescued by his 14-year-old cousin, this event drew statewide attention to the underground blaze. In 1984, Congress allotted $42 million for relocation efforts. Most residents accepted buyouts and moved to neighboring communities.
In 1992 Governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain on all the property in the borough, reaching an agreement with those who wanted to live in their homes for as long as they like. In 2002 the U.S. Postal Service discontinued the town’s ZIP code. In 2009 Governor Ed Rendell began the formal eviction of the remaining residents. As of the 2010 Census, 10 people still resided in Centralia, in three houses.
Pennsylvania Route 61 previously granted access to Centralia, but was closed in 1994 when it was deemed too expensive to repair. In 1983 the still-burning underground fire had caused severe buckling along the highway, it was deemed unsafe and repaired for $500,000. The fire later spread to the neighboring boroughs of Ashland and Byrnsville, which was later demolished as a result of the underground blaze.
The nearly one-mile long stretch of Route 61 today no longer smolders, though it was reported to as late as 2007. It no longer connects to any highway after Pennsylvania Route 901 rerouted it in 1999. Even at its peak population in 1890 only 2,761 people resided there, by 1980 that number had dropped to 1,000. Despite this, today the abandoned stretch of Route 61 has a great deal of foot traffic. I visited with Dave and his brother Dan on Saturday, November 26, 2016. Considering there is no neighboring commerce to speak of and that Centralia itself isn’t near a major city, on that on a chilly, Saturday afternoon we saw dozens of other people, including painters, drone operators, motorbike guys, fourwheeling guys, guys who drive Subarus like assholes, artists, families, teenagers who decided the middle of an abandoned highway is a great place for band practice and drinking Jägermeister.
I wasn’t able to find much information on when the graffiti started to appear on the highway, except that it started pretty much immediately after the highway was decommissioned. Older photos show graffiti on the highway but certainly not with the density that I saw there this year. Today it covers nearly every single square foot of the nearly one-mile-long stretch of highway. It offers a self-regulated opportunity for political discourse, expression of talent, or as it is most commonly used, a place to draw a penis. Actually, penises are all over this highway. If you don’t want anyone painting a penis on something you drew, don’t draw it on this stretch of highway. At times, walking down the Centralia, PA graffiti highway can feel like walking through the physical manifestation of the YouTube comment section. I didn’t see any tags dated any earlier than August, 2015, which means either all of this art has exploded in quantity over the course of one year or, more likely, that winter wrecks havoc on the existing art every year, leaving a much cleaner slate every spring. If that’s true, the annual discourse on the graffiti highway, and there certainly is a discourse, will always be a barometer of the social and political climates of Central Pennsylvania.
