![]() The road itself is covered with graffiti. It’s utterly deserted, but you can still hear the sounds of traffic from the nearby reroute. Park nearby and the old section of Route 61 isn’t hard to find. But if you follow the road north out of Ashland, you’ll come to a cemetery at the top of a hill before you hit the next town. The actual Route 61 now circumvents this section, swinging wide between two hills to avoid the slowly extending fire damage that undermines the landscape. There’s the town itself – or what’s left of it – and a closed-off portion of road that used to be part of Route 61. There are two halves to a look at Centralia. But the trip is perhaps more interesting because it’s nothing like what I expect. ![]() It’s sunny and more than a little muggy, the surrounding hills bursting with plant life in a way I’m still not used to as a resident of Colorado. On the day we go, the fires aren’t burning with particular ferocity – the air is almost entirely clear. If you’re expecting someplace as haunting and creepy as the video game setting, I can’t guarantee that Centralia will deliver. Needless to say, as a fan of the games, I leap at the chance to see Centralia. In later games, the fog was left to be more traditional water vapor and the mining town history fell by the wayside. ![]() In the original game (Silent Hill) and the movie, it was clear that the billowing white fog engulfing the town was actually smoke and ash from the underground fires. Trees in the area are bleached and blasted by the fumes.Ĭentralia was the inspiration for the fictional town of Silent Hill, which spawned a successful franchise of survival horror videogames as well as a somewhat less impressive movie. It’s a haunting place where white smoke stinking of sulfur billows from the ground itself and the roads collapse as the fire continues to eat its way through the coal veins. It’s the town that was devastated by an underground coal fire. If you’re not a fan of horror videogames or somewhat obscure but recent east coast history, Centralia probably doesn’t ring any bells. Well, the native of Pennsylvania (my dear friend Rynn) mentions that we’re maybe an hour away from Centralia. Ten hours to go until the US premiere of Avengers and I’m in central Pennsylvania with a group of friends specifically to see that movie. ![]()
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