Laurel coal Fire,

Laurel County, PA

Disappearing
history and the
natural world
reclaiming it

A fire smolders in an abandoned coal mine deep underground. Gases seep to the surface
through fissures in the earth. A blue-collar Pennsylvania town vaporizes, chased away by
the blaze. But this is not Centralia, where subterranean seams of anthracite have been
burning since 1962. No, this is Laurel Run, a town done in by a mine fire that’s been burning
nearly twice as long.

Though Centralia has garnered the lion’s share of attention as the ghost town made famous
by a mine fire, the central Pennsylvania borough is not the only place to have been erased
from below. Underground fires have come and gone since Pennsylvania’s mines first
opened in the 18th century. More than three dozen active mine fires are currently burning in
that state. When those infernos were away from population centers, people mostly ignored
them. A few times, though, when acrid gases rose through city streets, there was no option
but to raise the white flag of surrender and relocate an entire community.

Laurel Run was just such a borough. This was once a thriving hamlet, hemmed in between
Wilkes-Barre Township and a high ridge called Giant’s Despair. Laurel Run was in many
ways a typical town in Pennsylvania’s anthracite belt, laden with enough working-class
struggles to keep life interesting.

Laurel Run also happened to be situated directly above the Red Ash coal mine, which
caught fire in 1915 when a miner’s lamp ignited timbers supporting a tunnel through the
anthracite. The mine has been on fire for 100 years, fed by ample oxygen in the old workings
and an endless supply of fuel. In the 1960s, after failed attempts to extinguish the fire, the
government moved every last resident out of Laurel Run and razed every last structure,
more than 150 buildings in all: houses, an elementary school, a church, everything.