Somebody sent this to me. It is images of the forgotten towns of Appalachia. It reminded me of the forgotten towns of New Jersey. It is a nice video.
Ghosts in the Hollow
- Thread starter PancoastDrifter
- Start date
Good video, thanks for posting it. There are places like that in PA. One I visited some time ago is Centralia, about 2 hrs from here. This town is where an underground coal fire started many years ago and continues to burn.
There are definitely some awesome spots in Centralia. I spent a whole day there about 6 months ago. It was very cool to see the smoke pouring out of the cemetery. I also visited the road that was pretty much completely gone. I don't remember which road it was, but you could see the remains of the destroyed houses and parts of the road were completely gone. You could see the smoke coming from the vents. I can't remember the name of the road, but if anyone would be interested in taking a road trip back out there and would like some company...please let me know!
That road was probably RT 61, it looked like an earthquake zone with the splits in it. You have to be careful where you go, as there are poisonous gases coming from the fire below. Best to stay away from low spots where the gas can accumulate. When I was there, some folks were still living in the town, although 98% of it was vacated. There were detours on all roads going into town, but they were easy to get around, just need to use common sense. Kind of reminded me of Yellowstone
A little bit of an update with this town - the state is officially kicking everyone out to get underway with the cleanup and elimination of the fire. After all the unsuccessful efforts to put the fire out under the ground, it was determined the best way to get rid of the hazard would be to strip mine the entire hill. Only a handful of residents have been keeping the strip mining from happening until recently. Yahoo featured an article about it a month or two ago but I couldn't find it. It's going to be a really interesting light show when they dig the miniature hell out of the ground!
My wife and I were through Appalachia in January and February of this year, part of our Dixie roadtrip tour. The folks there were great. They didn't know of the Jersey Pines, only of the cities up north near NYC. Talking about the Pines and the people here, they embraced our every word. They didn't understand the flatlands because of the mountains in WVA and South West Va. I even got a haircut in WVA and not knowing what to expect, I thought I would end up with my old Army haircut from basic training. Not so, it was as if I was in Cherry Hill. We did a lot of touring in that area but we never got into a coal mine, only a coal museum. Next year we are going to Big Stone Gap, in Appalachia, and we will go into one of the mine shafts, on a tour.
This mine tour is in Ashland Pa. near Centralia.
http://www.pioneertunnel.com/home.shtml
I took it about 15 years ago when my kids were younger.
It is not quite as touristy as it looks and the subsurface part of the trip is impressive.
http://www.pioneertunnel.com/minetour.html