General Index
[1 - Overview] [2 - My wreck!] [7 - Crazy Robin!] [9 - Candy's Ranger] [10 - Keypad entry system]

Meets and Outings
[11 - Centralia adventure Part I] [21 - Centralia adventure Part II]

How-To Articles
[3 - Overhead Console Install] [4 - Overhead Console Wiring] [5 - MAF mod] [6 - LED switch mod] [8 - Homebrew Remote Bass Control] [12 - Headlight/4x4 Switch LED Mod] [13 - General LED tutorial] [14 - EATC install how-to (pages 14-19)] [20 - IAT Resistor Mod (older engines only)] [22 - Automatic Power Windows] [23 - Cruise Control Pod LED's]

Centralia, PA -- Underground fires and offroading

The original trip page is down towards the bottom of the page. It has more of the description of what Centralia is all about. Basically, it's a fantastic and unreal landscape of smoking and sinking land, a demolished town, offroad trails, trash and more trash, and a few hardy souls keeping the dream alive. Maybe a nightmare? It's a beautiful section of the country except for what man has done to it, so you can see why they don't want to leave. There are "ties" that go deeper than that also -- but it is unwise to remain, as you will see.
I have several trips to update and I'm way behind in keeping this page up, but I'll start catching up.

Centralia, Fall 2003

What I liked about this trip is we got over the barriers that close off the broken and sinking section of highway 61 and "posed" with out trucks next to the smoking cracks there. To the right is my truck next to one of the bigger fissures in the highway. Yes, that is smoke coming out. The bottom of the crack is between 150 to 200 degrees F even though the fire is far below. There are hotter places, as you'll see if you browse this page. Four of us ventured out that day, as you can see below and the lovely lady leaning on my truck below right is my daughter Sarah.

Below left is me descending into the "valley of death", lol. No, really its an area next to the highway where massive subsidence occured. As the coal burns away underground, the ground can collapse. Below right you are looking down the subsidence area and you can clearly see where it fell on the right hand edge of the picture. The ground fell 50 feet or more.

To the right is me getting a headache. It is my custom to take surface temperature readings every time I go up there. I was in a particularly "active" section and I didn't hold my breath long enough. I breathed a few times (but I didn't inhale, lol) and ended up with a 24 hour headache. Reason? Presumably carbon monoxide (CO). On a later trip I took a gas analyzer and measured 300ppm CO in that same area! This is in the open! I can only imagine what would happen if it seeped up into one of the remaining homes.

Below left is the group entering one of the totally dead area above the town; where the gases and ground heat allow nothing to grow and the topsoil erodes. The resulting "lunar landscape" is distinctive. To the right you can see the fire is not far from some of the remaining homes.

We found a bit of mud and had some fun playing. Nothing too challenging, but it was a large flat area where you could get some speed up and do some AMAZING slides!

Well, the only downside besides the headache was the body damage I took on the passenger side of the truck. Sometimes the barriers are eroded enough to get over onto the highway even with mild offroad trucks like mine. However my lack of experience probably contributed to my taking the wrong line over the steep, eroded mounds coming back out. I slid down into an embankment, denting in the rocker panel. Oh well -- if you haven't taken some damage you probably aren't offroading! I've pulled it out and repaired it some since then. Overall, a great trip to the worlds most unlikely tourist attraction.

First trip to Centralia

Since 1962, an underground coal fire started by a landfill fire has been burning its way slowly across the land in Centralia, destroying roads, and threatening the property of the residents.

Google list of good articles on Centralia

The pictures below show Centralia today. From a population of about 1100 the population has declined to about 21 according to some sources. The government bought and tore down the houses to keep people out. But some people stayed as you can see. The fire front is now only a couple of hundred yards from the town.

To the right is the "time capsule" buried on the town's 1966 centennial celebration. No one probably suspected what the towns fate would eventually be. Below, this monument still stands in the town square, and someone maintains the square. Also, a cemetary that is very close to thw SW corner of the town where one of the fire fronts is. Somehow the fire has "missed" this cemetary so far, even though it seems to have gone right around it! Draw what conclusions you wish from that one.

Below are a couple of shots from the closed section of Hwy 61 (now bypassed). On the left, one of the large cracks which rent the road due to the upthrust from heat, and the following subsidence of the land as the fire passed. Even though this site is decades old, note that the crack is still steaming and I'm reading over 160 F with a hand held optical pyrometer. 10 years after the fire "peaked" here and it's STILL pretty hot!

To the right is a high temperature probe inserted 10" into the ground in a subsidence rift just W of the closed HWY 61. Even here we are well above 200 degrees F. In the pictures below is one of the hottest vents we found. Surface temperature of 500 degrees and sub-surface was measured at 565 and was still rising when we took the probe out. It got really hot. The bottle was a 20 oz. empty soda bottle that a member held in the superheated steam coming from the vent. It popped, fell out of his hand, quickly shriveled and soon melted down completely.

There's quite a bit of devastation that can be seen on the surface where the fire has been and is still heating the ground. The tree's look like "driftwood" planted in the ground, killed by the heat with their bark stripped. Brush has completely disappeared in places. The two photo's below give you the idea. They are taken from a low ridge on the southside of Centralia proper. The second picture is facing north overlooking Centralia. That's my daughter Alyssa to the left.

We went off roading on the old trails used by the coal mining companies. Some of them are VERY rocky with rocks ranging from gravel to rocks the size of your head or larger. With only a 4x2 Ranger (with stock Goodyears!) I had to pick my line and keep my momentum up to keep from getting bogged down. There are places where if I stopped I might not get moving again. Some of the rocks are sharp edged and others are like "ball bearings" rolling out from under your wheels!

When we got to the top there were some nice, but narrow, wooded trails. Some of these were kind of muddy, but nothing difficult at all. One of our group (Adam) seemed to get more mud ON his truck, and later we saw more mud IN his truck (photo farther down).

We found some disturbing evidence that the "Blair Witch Project" may have been true! I don't even want speculate on what the stains are on the "altar" below. Boy Scouts gone bad?! Who knows, but we didn't hang around there for real long. It was a dead end trail accessed by a pretty heavily rutted area that wasn't particularly accessible anyway.

In fact, my "stuck" photo's appear below. Basically, crossing one of the large "ruts" in the area leading up to the "Blair Witch" trail, I wimped out. I saw Carl with his 4x4 Ranger with bigger tires and an excellent bumper (picture later) look like he barely cleared it going through and I figured my stock height Edge (which has 4x4 height, but smaller stock tires) might not have the approach/departure angle to make it so I went too slow. I ended up nose down on a rock with insufficient traction to either go forward or back and Carl had to dig out the offending rock before I could proceed. Once the rock was gone (nice wheel chock, huh?) I was able to proceed.

There were three of us driving on the off road segment. Carl's 2001 4x4 Ranger XLT is at the upper left -- note the custom fabbed tube bumper and 4 ton Warn winch. Just above is Adam's FX4 Ranger. And just to the left is my 4x2 (but I have a limited slip rear) Ranger Edge. Being with two capable 4x4 trucks with winches and recovery straps gave me the confidence to try things I might not have otherwise. The very first picture on this page is me taking on a short but steep rocky slope I wouldn't have thought I could get up. My 10 year old daughter Alyssa was my ride along and she had a blast.

At the end of the day we got back to the campsite and hung out before I headed home. Below at the left is Carl crashing by the fire, and to the right is Carl's friend Demetra and my daughter Alyssa.

I mentioned mud with regard to Adam's truck. When we were at the campsite we were discussing how the mud gets in your engine compartment. This was Adam's first off road trip and he was concerned about how dirty his engine might have gotten. We kidded him about it ("Oh yeah, it's dirty now, man!") and he went to see. This is WAY more mud than normal for what we went through and it's because his FX4 was missing the barrier in the driver's side fender well. As a result, the tire could throw tremendous volumes of junk in to the engine compartment. Adam looks suitably disgusted.

By the way, the missing panels in the fender well are common on some 2002 and 2003 models so check your truck before you go play in the mud!

All in all we had a great time and it was quite a unique trip. Looking forward to going back again!