Graffiti Highway (abandoned section of Route 61), Centralia, Pennsylvania

Route 61 used to run straight into Centralia, Pennsylvania. Then the ground under it began to heat up. An underground coal mine fire that started in 1962 spread through the old workings beneath the town. Smoke and steam pushed up through the road, cracking the pavement. Crews patched it again and again, but the road kept breaking. In 1993, the detour around it became the permanent highway, and about three-quarters of a mile of old Route 61 was left behind. People found the abandoned road anyway. By the mid-2000s, graffiti artists were covering the cracked asphalt in tags, names and murals, and the strip became known as Graffiti Highway. Visitors came from out of state to walk it, and in places they could still see smoke rising from the cracks. PennDOT posted No Trespassing signs in 2016. In 2018, the state gave up the road, and the land went to the neighboring owners, mainly a subsidiary of the coal company Pagnotti Enterprises. A 2017 petition to save the highway drew more than 24,000 signatures. In spring 2020, crowds kept showing up despite the pandemic stay-at-home orders. A late-March bonfire drew about 200 people and dozens of ATVs. On April 6, heavy equipment arrived, and the owners covered the road with several hundred mounds of dirt. Local officials said the owners were tired of the complaints, the liability and the vandalism in the nearby cemetery. Today, aerial imagery shows the former Graffiti Highway almost entirely hidden under dirt berms.