Bird’s Eye View of a Ghost Town
Written by Chad on August 24th, 2009Was looking around at some local locations today, and I noticed that there are some new Bird’s Eye images of the local area (yet my location is still old imagery o.0) but what is interesting to see is a ghost town with a Bird’s Eye view.
Centralia, Pennsylvania has a unique reason why it went from a bustling town of over 1000 people down to 12 residents. In 1962 a garbage dump fire ignited left over coal and that fire has since burned underground and is still burning to this day.
Centralia in 1962
Topo map of the town before the move out
You can see how Centralia looks now on the Bing maps here.
The center of town
Old and new Route 61
25
AM
Here are a couple aerials from 1974 that show the town and even smoke, which I assume is from the fires.
http://www.gelib.com/temp/Centralia_1974.jpg
http://www.gelib.com/temp/Centralia_1974b.jpg
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25
AM
Ooh. nice find (was trying to find some older aerials for the post). Yes, the smoke is where the fire had poked holes up through the ground and was venting.
I need to take a trip back down there one of my days off (only 30 minutes away) and get some pictures. The bird’s eye really helps figure out what I should go see.
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