These are the decaying remains of the miner’s wash house in Byrnesville, Pennsylvania. The wash house was part of the Raven Run Coal Company. The building was once used as a garage for the company ambulance, a lamp house that serviced miner’s lamps used in the mines and a place for miners to wash after they finished working. This particular shot is of the ambulance garage area.
Byrnesville was a small town located between Ashland and Centralia, PA. It was inhabited mostly by mine workers and their families. Because of the underground mine fire that has been burning beneath Centralia since 1962, Byrnesville residents were forced to abandon their town and the last home in the town was demolished in 1996.
There is a web site that details the history of the town in words and photos located here.
I took this on Saturday afternoon 3-14-2009. Processed as a single RAW image through Photomatix Pro to make an HDR.
