MapTheOdd / Infrastructure / The town above a burning mine
Infrastructure · US Geological Survey
The town above a burning mine
Centralia, Pennsylvania · 40° 48′ N · 76° 20′ W
A long-lived underground mine fire altered roads, settlement and population.
Field note
Geological, population and civic records together explain why a mapped town can persist after most residents have gone.
What the map reveals
The site makes a usually hidden transport, utility, defence, extraction or communications system visible.
When to go
April–June and September–October are useful shoulder-season starting points.
Evidence and practical context
USGS mine-fire and geological resources. The dataset supports discovery and context; inspect the original record for its full description, boundaries and status.
Place intelligence v2
What the surrounding data reveals
unknown relative to mapped settlements · access signal: generally accessible · evidence confidence 85/100.
Nearest cross-dataset oddities
Similar elsewhere in the world
Distances are straight-line approximations. Rarity is measured within MapTheOdd’s current catalogue.
MapTheOdd data passport
What this page adds
Evidence ledger
This separates source facts, editorial interpretation and computed context so they are not presented as equivalent claims.
| Coordinate | Parsed from the published place record | High |
|---|---|---|
| Place identity | The town above a burning mine | Medium–high |
| Interpretation | Geological, population and civic records together explain why a mapped town can persist after most residents have gone. | Medium |
| Local context | No GeoNames match | Computed |
| Access | Operational and former infrastructure may be restricted or hazardous. | Requires live checking |
Reuse the record
Download the structured place record, computed geographic context and provenance used by this page. This makes the page inspectable rather than a closed editorial summary.
Generated from source data checked August 2026. Computed relationships are reproducible approximations, not claims about legal access or current operating status.