Comment by thejarren
13 days ago
I grew up in Pennsylvania and have visited Centralia a few times over the years. When I was younger, I remember being able to see smoke rise from the ground, but in recent years, I haven’t seen anything almost as if the fire has subsided a bit.
Pennsylvania is filled with old coal mining towns, and most of them are in a state of decay. Towns like Pottsville, Pennsylvania have buildings crumbling down on their main streets.
If anything, I think Centralia is representative of where these other towns could be in 50 to 100 years, assuming people move to larger communities. Barring the fire under the ground, of course.
I was on a road trip a few months back and took a slight detour to pass through centralia, and there was enough smoke that I could see it from the road. Some local had set up a lawn chair and chained it to a tree so passers-by would know where to stop and take a peek
That's my kind of civic-mindedness.
It turns out basing entire economies off of resource extraction isn't sustainable. If only we hadn't had to re-experience this over and over again decade after decade. But I'm sure the next Republican candidates will promise more coal jobs so they will continue to be voted for and nothing will substantially change.
Pottsville wasn't founded as a mining settlement. It was an industrial hub that built up around the nearby forge purchased by John Potts. It had a large textile industry and still has America's oldest brewery. In addition to industry it's also the local county seat, and it briefly had an NFL franchise. The industry mostly left in the late 20th century but the nearby mining continues - the coal is just sent elsewhere for use.
> Pottsville, Pennsylvania
It was founded in 1808. Not exactly sure how they was supposed to know.
It was incorporated in 1866. And do you think people in 1866 were stupid? Do you think there weren't plenty of examples of towns stood up around resource extraction which failed prior to that? Centralia had the benefit of tons of Gold Rush towns dying out before they were incorporated they had the opportunities to learn from.
> Pennsylvania is filled with old coal mining towns, and most of them are in a state of decay. Towns like Pottsville, Pennsylvania have buildings crumbling down on their main streets
And it's been going on long enough that Billy Joel even had a hit song about one over 40 years ago
There's some Youtuber who posts videos of driving out to these places and talking to the locals. It's pretty depressing, the closest I've seen to it is isolated towns in immediately post-Soviet eastern Europe, but without the meth problems.