centralia

The town's four cemeteries—including one on the hilltop which has smoke rising around and out of it—are maintained in good condition.

The only indications of the fire, which underlies some 400 acres (160 ha) spreading along four fronts, are low round metal steam vents in the south of the borough. Additional smoke and steam can be seen coming from an abandoned portion of Pennsylvania Route 61, the area just behind the hilltop cemetery, and other cracks in the ground scattered abou... See more

In April 2020, amidst the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, the property's current owners made the decision to cover over the graffiti on the highway section of old Route 61. Several hundred mounds of dirt were laid over the area, thus ending a decades-long fascination with the desolate stretch of road.[32] Google Maps overhead satellite-view im... See more

Another theory proposes that the Bast Colliery fire of 1932 was never fully extinguished, and that fire reached the landfill area by 1962; however, a miner named Frank Jurgill Sr. disputes that theory. Jurgill claims he operated a bootleg mine with his brother near the landfill from 1960 to 1962. If the Bast Colliery fire had not been extinguished,... See more

By contrast, other sources[15] claim that the fire had started the previous day, when a trash hauler dumped hot ash or coal discarded from coal burners into the open trash pit. The author of The Day the Earth Caved In noted that borough council minutes from June 4, 1962, referred to two fires at the dump and that five firefighters had submitted bil... See more

The town's residents and former residents decided to open a time capsule buried in 1966 a couple of years earlier than planned after someone had attempted to unearth and steal the capsule in May 2014. The capsule was not scheduled to be opened until 2016 (50 years after it was buried). Items found in the footlocker-sized capsule, which had been inu... See more

In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service discontinued Centralia's ZIP code, 17927.[7][24]

All real estate in the borough was claimed under eminent domain in 1992 and condemned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Centralia's ZIP Code was discontinued by the Postal Service in 2002.[7]