Centralia, PA - Rogue Valley

Pennsylvania 61

Through the very heart for some

Where industry has long been gone

Looks like any old abandoned town

It looks like any other place

Forgotten and left to waste

Its residents have long been chased

Away

Steam rises from the fields

Smoke-clouds skim the street

A fire burns underneath

The fallen city

This old mining community

Is hotter than the planet mercury

A statuette without a face

Disfigured and erased

Four hundred acres all unseen

Been burning since 1960

The government gave it up

Paid money for all the people to move out

They took their pictures and precious things

Their families, their histories

Level it all let nature reclaim

This town

Smoke rises from the hills

Like some kind of poison spell

The mines are smoldering still

After fifty years

They’ll burn for a hundred more

Hollowing a harrowing core

The coal went then the soul went

The other way down

Pennsylvania 61

Level it all

Don’t look back on

Pennsylvania 61