Fascinating. It's hard to even comprehend an underground coal fire that could burn for 250 years - though apparently the oldest known coal seam fire has been burning in Australia for 6000 years! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Mountain
I grew up about an hour from here. It's a fun place to hang out, but isn't really smoking like it used to. If you get up there early on a cool day you can find some warm cracks with smoke coming out, but that's about it.
Yeah, the story is great, but it's pretty uninteresting to actually visit. It's definitely one of those places that people like to justify their trip to by sharing pictures of the one actual smoking hole they found and saying it's amazing.
I Watched a documentary about some of the people that still live there. Probably one of the most boring documentaries I've ever watched. I've watched documentaries on the history of indoor plumbing that were more interesting.
As the grandson of a plumber and son of a plumbing engineer, just have to jump in here and defend plumbing...it's damn interesting! It's also responsible for a larger chunk of recent increases in longevity than probably anything other than maybe antibiotics.
If you do visit, it's an interesting post-apocalyptic world. Explore a little bit to the southeast of the old town and you'll find a locked shed, untouched, with a very old car inside and a sign boarding up the back window that says, "The dying set free the souls in Purgatory."
Avoid the few remaining natives, as they're understandably territorial and suspicious since they're living there in defiance of a court order.
I was there in 2008. I went there because I'm a fan of the Silent Hill series and read somewhere that the town in the game was inspired by it. The place smells like sulphur, kinda like what you find near volcanoes. Roads are cracked, bark on trees has turned white and yes, you can sometimes light a match if you leave it on the ground. It's a very isolated place too. I wouldn't recommend going alone.
Been there, theres not a lot to see beyond the fire station and a memorial to veterans. I first heard about it in an article about the movie Silent Hill and how the producers discovered a town that was covered in fog like the fictional city. There is actually a pretty cool This American Life episode about it: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/59/fi...
Centralia on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8006547,-76.3428604,287m/dat...