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Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Keating Township, PA
The broken concrete walls in Austin Dam Memorial Park are the remains of the dam that failed catastrophically in 1911, sending water and debris through the valley and killing dozens of people. Visitors can walk among the enormous tilted sections of concrete and see interpretive material in the public park.
Bethlehem, PA
Five enormous blast furnaces from the former Bethlehem Steel plant loom over the SteelStacks arts campus, preserving the scale of a company that once employed tens of thousands of workers. Visitors can view the furnaces freely from the public campus and Hoover-Mason Trestle, with guided industrial-history tours available separately.
Rankin, PA
Carrie Furnaces 6 and 7 are surviving pieces of the enormous Homestead Works steel complex that once dominated the Monongahela Valley. Rivers of Steel preserves the furnaces and offers scheduled industrial-history tours, but visitors cannot freely enter the site outside authorized programs.
Centralia, PA
A coal seam under the borough caught fire in 1962 and is still burning. Almost everyone was bought out and moved; the street grid remains, the buildings mostly do not, and steam still works its way up through the ground on cold mornings.
Hanover Township, PA
Twenty reinforced-concrete houses were built here in 1911 as experimental company housing for coal workers, then abandoned little more than a decade later. The roofless shells still stand in the woods near Nanticoke, but reaching them requires walking from the public access area and the structures are deteriorated, so do not climb unstable walls or enter restricted land.
Paradise Township, PA
Deep in State Game Lands 221 are stone fireplaces, foundations and mechanical remnants from a large building whose exact purpose remains disputed, with stories ranging from a ski lodge to a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Reaching the ruins requires a secluded hike with multiple stream crossings, and hunters use the surrounding state game lands seasonally.
Titusville, PA
Edwin Drake's successful 1859 oil well at this site helped launch the modern petroleum industry. The museum preserves a replica well house, operating historic oil-field equipment and exhibits explaining the chaotic oil boom that transformed northwestern Pennsylvania.
Foster Township, PA
Eckley is a remarkably intact nineteenth-century anthracite company town with miners' houses, churches, a company store and other surviving structures. The village itself can be walked or driven through from dawn to dusk, while the museum and building interiors follow posted hours.
Evans City, PA
The opening cemetery sequence in George A. Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead was filmed here, including the first zombie attack on Johnny and Barbra. The cemetery is still active and open to respectful visitors, so stay on cemetery roads and paths and avoid disturbing graves while looking for recognizable filming locations.
Tyrone Township, PA
Fort Roberdeau reconstructs a Revolutionary War-era lead-mining fort built in 1778 to protect local mining operations. The palisade, cabins and grounds can be explored during its seasonal tour season, while the exterior grounds remain visible outside normal interior-tour hours.
Cornplanter Township, PA
Pithole exploded into a booming oil town after nearby wells struck petroleum in 1865 and collapsed almost as quickly when the boom moved elsewhere. Little of the original city remains above ground, but paths, foundations, interpretation and a seasonal visitor center preserve one of Pennsylvania's most dramatic ghost towns.
North Codorus Township, PA
Built in the 1830s, Howard Tunnel is one of the oldest surviving railroad tunnels in the United States and remains part of an active rail corridor. The York County Heritage Rail Trail passes beside and through the historic corridor, so visitors should use the designated trail and never walk on the active tracks.
Lititz, PA
Julius Sturgis opened his commercial pretzel bakery here in 1861, and the historic stone building still operates as a visitor attraction. Guided bakery tours explain early pretzel making and let visitors try forming the traditional pretzel shape by hand.
Philadelphia, PA
Laurel Hill opened in 1836 as one of America's early rural cemeteries and became a landscape of elaborate mausoleums, sculptures and graves of prominent Philadelphians. The cemetery welcomes self-guided visitors every day and also hosts historical, architectural and macabre-themed tours and events.
Lawrence Park Township, PA
This prefabricated Silk City "dinor" arrived in Lawrence Park in 1948 and retains much of its original mid-century diner architecture. It is listed on the National Register, still serves breakfast and lunch, and preserves the peculiar **dinor-with-an-o** spelling that became a Northwestern Pennsylvania tradition.
Erie, PA
This reconstructed blockhouse marks the Fort Presque Isle site where Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne died in 1796 and was first buried. When his son later came to move the body east, Wayne's partially decomposed remains were boiled so the bones could be transported, leaving Erie associated with one of the strangest posthumous journeys in American military history; interior access is limited, but the grounds can be visited.
Jefferson Township, PA
Meadowcroft preserves a rock shelter containing evidence of human occupation dating back thousands of years and central to debates about the earliest settlement of North America. The archaeological site is protected beneath a modern enclosure and can be seen on guided tours during the museum's operating season.
Philadelphia, PA
Once one of Pennsylvania's largest Victorian cemeteries, Mount Moriah fell into severe abandonment after its old cemetery association disappeared, leaving mausoleums and graves swallowed by vegetation. Volunteers have reopened substantial sections, but public access is normally limited to weather-dependent weekend gate hours and visitors should stay on cleared routes.
Ambridge, PA
The Harmony Society established Economy in 1824 as a highly organized religious communal settlement while its members awaited the Second Coming. Seventeen historic buildings, gardens and original artifacts survive as a state historic site, with public access during its seasonal operating schedule.
Somerset, PA
Nine miners were trapped underground by flooding at Quecreek in July 2002 and were brought out alive after a highly publicized 77-hour rescue. The rescue field is now Monument for Life Memorial Park, where visitors can see the rescue shaft, a miner statue and outdoor memorials; the educational center has separate operating hours.
Cold Spring Township, PA
Rausch Gap was a nineteenth-century railroad and coal settlement that disappeared after industry moved away, leaving foundations, a cemetery and other traces in the forest. The abandoned town site is reached on foot along the Appalachian Trail and related trails, so it requires a hike rather than a roadside visit.
Reading, PA
William Abbott Witman constructed Reading's Japanese-inspired Pagoda in 1908 as the centerpiece of a proposed mountaintop resort, but the resort plan collapsed after he failed to secure a liquor license. The city acquired it for $1 in 1911; following a major restoration, the grounds are open daily while the building itself currently opens only for selected ticketed walkthroughs and arranged group tours.
Stewartstown, PA
Powwow practitioner Nelson Rehmeyer was murdered inside this house in 1928 by men who believed he had placed a hex on one of them, producing the sensational case remembered as the York Witch Trial. The house survives, but it no longer has dependable public tour hours, so treat it as private property and view only from the public road unless an official event specifically grants access.
Fulton County, PA
Sideling Hill Tunnel is a 6,782-foot former Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnel abandoned when the highway was rerouted in 1968. It is now part of the informal Pike2Bike route; reaching it requires hiking or cycling, and the interior is completely unlit, wet and rough, so visitors need lights and should use the established access points.
