In 1962 a trash fire crept into a coal seam beneath Centralia, Pennsylvania — and never went out. Sixty years later the ground still smokes, the ZIP code has been revoked, and a handful of holdouts live atop an inferno that could burn for another 250 years.
The definitive record of how a landfill burn on May 27, 1962 reached an exposed coal vein and ignited a fire that spread through a labyrinth of abandoned mine tunnels beneath the town.
How decades of failed extinguishing attempts, sinkholes, and lethal carbon monoxide slowly turned a working coal town of 1,200 into a condemned wasteland.
Penn State's deep-dive account, including the 1981 moment a 12-year-old fell into a sudden 150-foot sinkhole of hot mud and steam — and barely survived.
Aerial views of streets, sidewalks, and church steps with no buildings behind them — a town almost entirely erased, reclaimed by forest and threaded with smoking vents.
A visit to present-day Centralia, where a few residents cling to life-estate deals that let them stay until they die, on land the state condemned decades ago.
A buckled, abandoned stretch of Route 61 became a spray-paint canvas and pilgrimage site — until owners buried the whole thing under dirt in 2020 to stop the crowds.
The human story of the buyouts, the holdouts, and how the town's eerie backstory helped inspire the video game and film Silent Hill.
More drone footage capturing the strange stillness: an American grid with no houses, cemeteries still tended, and steam rising from the earth in winter.