Centralia

Centralia was a coal town whose underground mine fire began in May 1962 when a trash fire in a pit ignited the old mine workings. By the late 1970s fumes were entering homes, Route 61 was closed in 1993 after the ground buckled, and nearly everyone left. A few residents and one active church, Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, remain beside cemeteries, and the colorful Graffiti Highway was buried in 2020 after fires were set there. Ground conditions and fumes can be unsafe.