11 creepy facts about Pennsylvania that textbooks leave out
You may not have learned these unsettling facts about Pennsylvania in school.
Textbooks, of course, celebrate Pennsylvania’s role in American history, from the nation’s founding to its wars and industries. But these historical milestones often overshadow darker details your history teacher may not have mentioned. From the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg to a secret military complex built deep within the mountains, here are 11 strange facts about Pennsylvania that add creepy context to our state’s historical narrative.
After the surviving troops departed, following the Battle of Gettysburg, Adams County residents had to bury thousands of bodies.
A staggering 50,000-plus soldiers were killed during the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, but most history books leave out what happened after the Union won the battle. Directly following the fight, Confederate troops retreated while Union troops conducted hurried, shallow burials of some of the dead before they departed. That left Gettysburg residents to finish the job, especially after torrential rains exhumed some of the shallow graves. “A sickening, overpowering, awful stench announced the presence of the unburied dead upon which the July sun was mercilessly shining and at every step the air grew heavier and fouler until it seemed to possess a palpable horrible density that could be seen and felt and cut with a knife,” wrote a nurse, Caroline Hancock, of the battle’s aftermath. Even years later, bodies would be discovered by townspeople after rain or by farmers prepping their fields for crops.
Throughout Pennsylvania, at least 5,000 abandoned coal mines lie under our feet.
Pennsylvania has the most abandoned coal mines of any state in the country, with more than 5,000 old mines creating a host of safety and environmental problems. Indeed, one of the most disconcerting facts about Pennsylvania is that these inactive mines still threaten us today. Many of the state’s abandoned mines are unmarked. And, unstable at the surface, they can easily give way in the form of sinkholes. Abandoned mines can also contain toxic gases, like carbon monoxide and methane.
Pennsylvania is home to more than 100 ghost towns (the most of any state) that were abandoned when industry left or declined.
Pennsylvania’s legacy of boom-and-bust industries—coal, lumber, and oil—contributed to the rise and fall of more than 100 communities that were eventually abandoned and are now considered ghost towns. While some of these towns completely disappeared, vestiges of others remain as old foundations or graveyards. The Ghost Town Trail, for example, is a 49-mile rail trail in Western Pennsylvania that passes through a handful of abandoned communities identifiable via historical markers, old slag piles, and iron furnaces.
An explosion at the Allegheny Arsenal near Pittsburgh was the worst civilian disaster during the Civil War.
The Allegheny Arsenal, located in Lawrenceville—now a neighborhood of Pittsburgh—was an important supply and manufacturing center for the Union Army during the Civil War. But on the same day that the Battle of Antietam was raging in Maryland, a series of accidental explosions rocked the arsenal and killed 78 of its workers. Most of them were young women. While it was the worst disaster to befall civilians during the Civil War, news of the tragedy was eclipsed by that of the bloody Battle of Antietam.
The first major epidemic in the United States took place in Philadelphia in 1793, when more than 10 percent of the city’s population died of Yellow Fever.
French colonists fleeing the Haitian Revolution brought Yellow Fever from the Caribbean to Philadelphia in 1793, sparking the worst epidemic the city had ever experienced. The medical disaster was so bad that businesses, the securities market, and the federal government (then based in Philadelphia) shut down as officials and executives fled the city. More than 5,000 people ultimately died—roughly 10 percent of the Philadelphia population at the time—before cold weather finally killed off the mosquitoes. Still, the damage was lasting: Philadelphia’s prominence as the nation’s financial center soon faded, ceding ground to New York City.
Many of the first settlers in Pennsylvania lived in caves, with roughly a third of the Philadelphia population living underground by 1682.
Before William Penn arrived in the Province of Pennsylvania in 1682, many of the earliest Quaker settlers built their initial lodgings directly into the banks of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. These makeshift caves were temporary shelters constructed while settlers worked on building permanent housing above ground. Still, by 1682, as many as 35 percent of the new immigrants lived in such caves.
Saint Anthony Chapel in Pittsburgh is home to more than 5,000 religious relics—second only to the Vatican.
In Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill neighborhood, the small Roman Catholic Saint Anthony Chapel has one of the biggest collections of holy relics in the world. Such relics are said to have once belonged to, or have touched, a saint or other holy person, and include bones, locks of hair, ashes, clothing, or other personal possessions. For example, the Troy Hill church purportedly houses 22 splinters from the cross Jesus was crucified on, a piece of the Virgin Mary’s veil, and a molar from St. Anthony.
The Centralia fire is expected to burn for hundreds of years.
An underground mine fire ignited in the town of Centralia in 1962, and it’s been burning ever since. In fact, the fire is expected to burn for another 250 years. More than 1,000 residents were evacuated from Centralia in the 1980s due to the fire, which still emits smoke and steam from the earth. Today, just five people live in Centralia—as part of an agreement with the state allowing them to remain until they die.
A U.S. military complex located inside a Pennsylvania mountain was built as an alternate command center for the Pentagon during the Cold War.
Found deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Raven Rock Mountain Complex is a classified, underground military complex in Pennsylvania. Nicknamed “Site R” or the “Underground Pentagon,” it’s home to a bunker that was part of the government’s plan to withstand a nuclear attack during the Cold War. Though much of what happens there is secret, we do know that it’s still a key part of the federal government’s emergency operations.
Nearly 200 ships may have sunk in the Pennsylvania waters of Lake Erie, but only a few dozen have been identified.
According to historical records, the Pennsylvania portion of Lake Erie is likely the final resting place of at least 196 ships, ranging from sailing vessels of the 1800s to 1900s-era barges and steam ships. As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie can be difficult to navigate, and its waves can be fast-building and choppy. However, only 35 shipwrecks have been identified in Pennsylvania’s part of Lake Erie, an area that has been proposed as a National Marine Sanctuary due to its historical maritime significance.
In 1684, William Penn presided over Pennsylvania’s only witch trial.
Before the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693, Pennsylvania founder William Penn presided over Philadelphia’s very own witch trial in 1683—the only known witch trial in the state. Two women were accused of practicing witchcraft, specifically bewitching livestock, and Penn convened a jury for their trials. In the trial of Swedish settler Margaret Mattson, the jury concluded that she was “guilty of having the common fame of a witch, but not guilty in manner and form of which she stands indicted”—in other words, she had a reputation of being a witch but was not guilty of bewitching animals and other crimes. Both Mattson and the other defendant, Swedish settler Yeshro Hendrickson, were required to post bonds of 50 pounds, to be returned after six months of good behavior—a sharp contrast to the deadly witch trials in other colonies.
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