If there’s an indisputable truth, it’s that human beings love mystery. Even more so when it comes to ghost towns. This is the story of Pennsylvania’s Graffiti Highway, a unique tourist attraction beneath which the ground has been burning since 1962 and could continue to do so until the year 2267, according to experts.
It was the year 1962, and the inhabitants of the mining town of Centralia were preparing to commemorate Memorial Day in honor of the American soldiers killed in combat. The city had to be well-decorated, clean, and ready to gather its residents for the patriotic holiday.
It’s not known exactly who, but someone proposed that the best way to deal with a 90-meter garbage dump was to burn it. Mistake! Since that day, the fire has continued to burn. The fire caught on to an old coal seam in the mine,” explains the website Ripleys.com, “and slowly spread under the city.”
It was coal—the very resource that once fueled the city’s rise—that ultimately sealed its fate. The disaster transformed nearly a one-kilometer stretch of Route 61 into a ghost town, forcing around 1,200 residents to flee. From this tragic history emerged one of the area’s most unique attractions: the Graffiti Highway.
A Graffiti Highway: The Good and the Bad
The highway was closed in 1990 after it was determined that it had been gradually sinking due to the fire. “It had uneven surfaces and showed steam through cracks in the asphalt,” according to the town’s website, Centraliapa.org.
It’s not known exactly who first started painting graffiti on the highway, but it is believed to have begun around 2000. “Sad and an eerie feeling,” is how one TripAdvisor user describes it. Another user, Justin H, says, “Centralia is worth visiting at least once.”
Currently, the highway is almost entirely covered. However, some visitors have said that much of the graffiti is of poor quality and even contains obscene imagery. In any case, those who have painted it have done so less for artistic reasons than to leave their mark on the place.
