Photo: Digital Vision
If you travel just beyond the beaten path, you may find something worth exploring. Past the city lights, traffic, and hustle and bustle of the crowds, you will find a tiny little nook of a place that few people call home. Perhaps, you will come across a small flower shop, a cafe that sits four next to a bar that has become a town landmark, or a little creek that flows past a wooden bench with names carved into the planks. A place where everyone knows everyone and time seems slower. This cute scene however, is not the case for the smallest town in Pennsylvania.
According to a list compiled by Readers Digest, the smallest town in all of Pennsylvania is Centralia. Despite its gruesome past, 11 residents still inhabit this tiny town where a fire continuously burns underneath the ground.
Here is what Readers Digest had to say about the smallest town in the entire state:
"This has to be the strangest small town in America. A coal fire has been raging under the city for more than 50 years, after a failed plan to burn landfill waste somehow sparked a fire in the coal mines in 1962. Today, the fire has led to the town’s notoriety, with its unsafe highway covered in graffiti and urban legends of a “gateway to hell” beneath the streets. But the tourists who come to gawk don’t realize that 11 brave residents still call the town home. Despite the dangers, they were allowed to stay, but they can’t sell or pass down their houses—when they move or die, their property will belong to the state."
For a full list of the smallest towns across the country visit rd.com.