Wehrum, Pennsylvania: A coal mining ghost town hidden in the woods

atlasobscura.com

19 pointsabhiminator6 comments

I grew up exploring stuff like this on dirt bikes in eastern and central Pennsylvania with my friends.

If you like this you'll definitely love Centralia

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/centralia-pennsylvania...

Fires under the town have been burning for decades.

Interesting, I think some people said this was an inspiration for Silent Hill.

Looking at the map, the closest distance to a water source is the Susquehanna River which is about 15 miles away. Would it be feasible to pump water from all that way to build a geothermal plant? It seems like it's an awful waste of energy.

The issue is that the fire constantly moving around the area. By the time you build something it would not be burning there anymore.

Also, see the movie 'Nothing But Trouble'.

This is about 10-15 miles from where I grew up. There are several of these ghost towns that dot the area where mining, iron furnaces, or coke ovens once existed. There is one town not too far from this one that is now under 10-20 feet of water as it was flooded when the Conemagh dam was built.

For the curious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livermore,_Pennsylvania

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