CENTRALIA -- Centralia in Columbia County has been virtually a ghost town since a mine fire chased nearly everyone out of the borough in the early 1980s.
Now, a graphic designer in the area is hoping to bring the area back to life - digitally!
"Some people think of it as their own little personal dump," explained Steve Catizone, a graphic designer in Aristes. "Don't pay the garbageman, (people say,)let's just go to Centralia."
That's what prompted Steve Catizone to try to raise $10,000 to help build a 3D interactive model of what Centralia used to look like before the federal government and the mine fire drove them out.
"Gather all the info, scale and everything else, and one by one rebuild each home and put it altogether and we'll have Centralia," Catizone explained.
Catizone hopes people who used to live in the area and even those curious tourists will share his enthusiasm for the project.
"Be cool to see where the people used to live and stuff," said Chad Morgan of Levittown.
"The more attention folks can have on the community and there is a community here, it's just very small, the better of this community is going to be," explained John Comarnisky, who lived in Centralia until 2009. While Comarnisky likes the idea, he doesn't know how big a difference it will make from the pictures he has growing up.
"For me personally, it wouldn't be any big kind of attraction," he added.
If you're interested in donating to the project, you can do so by clicking here.
