Abandoned places in Pennsylvania are the physical record of an industrial revolution that built America and then left its machinery to rust. With 373 documented abandoned locations on the Urbex Maps atlas, Pennsylvania is one of the densest states in the country for serious urban exploration, and the density is not accidental. This is the state that forged the steel that built the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, and the warships that won two World Wars. The state where anthracite coal powered the factories of the Northeast for a century and then left behind a landscape of culm banks, breaker buildings, and company towns that have been emptying since the 1950s. The state where the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the first limited-access highway in the United States, was built in the 1930s and left an entire abandoned section of itself behind when the route was straightened in 1968. Pennsylvania does not do small-scale abandonment. It does it in blast furnaces and prison blocks and nuclear-proof concrete.
Pennsylvania's abandonment follows two major geographic tracks. The western half of the state is steel country: Pittsburgh, Bethlehem, Johnstown, and the dozens of mill towns along the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers that produced the steel that built industrial America and then shed hundreds of thousands of jobs when foreign competition, automation, and corporate consolidation gutted the domestic steel industry between the 1970s and 1990s. The eastern half is coal country: the anthracite fields of the Wyoming Valley, the Lehigh Valley, and Schuylkill County, where centuries of underground mining left a honeycomb of tunnels beneath entire towns, mine fires that have been burning for decades, and a human history of labor struggle, exploitation, and community collapse that is among the most intense in American history.
This guide covers 10 of the most iconic abandoned places in Pennsylvania, from the notorious Pennhurst asylum to the industrial cathedral of Bethlehem Steel. Every spot has free GPS coordinates on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas, a YouTube video embed, historical context, and access notes. These are real places with the kind of heavy industrial and institutional weight that makes Pennsylvania one of the most important urbex states in the country.
Free urbex GPS: how Urbex Maps works
Every spot in this guide has a free GPS pin on the Urbex Maps interactive atlas. No paywall for these 10, no registration wall, just coordinates dropped onto the map with access notes. The atlas works on mobile, which matters when you are navigating the old Abandoned Turnpike corridor on foot or trying to find the right entrance to the Alvira bunker complex in the woods of Union County. The full Pennsylvania database has 373 locations and growing, covering everything from steel mills and coal breakers to state hospitals and military installations.
1. Pennhurst State School and Hospital
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Pennhurst is one of the most infamous abandoned institutions in the United States. The sprawling campus in Spring City, Chester County, about 35 miles northwest of Philadelphia, operated for 79 years as a state-run facility for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and its history is a catalog of institutional failure, abuse, and the eventual legal revolution that changed how America treats its most vulnerable citizens.
The Eastern Pennsylvania State Institution for the Feeble-Minded and Epileptic, as it was originally named, opened in 1908. The campus was designed as a self-contained community: dormitory buildings, a hospital, a school, a power plant, a farm, workshops, and administrative buildings spread across hundreds of acres of rolling Chester County farmland. The facility was built during the eugenics era, when state policy explicitly aimed to segregate people with intellectual disabilities from the general population to prevent them from reproducing. Pennsylvania's 1903 Act to Provide for the Care of the Feeble-Minded made it possible to institutionalize people involuntarily, and Pennhurst was the result.
Overcrowding began almost immediately. Designed for a few hundred residents, the facility held over 2,700 by the 1950s and peaked at about 3,500. Buildings designed as dormitories became warehouses for human beings. Patients slept on bare floors. Staff-to-patient ratios were grotesquely inadequate. Physical abuse, neglect, and preventable deaths were documented repeatedly over the decades. A 1968 television expose by reporter Bill Baldini, titled Suffer the Little Children, broadcast footage from inside Pennhurst that shocked the public: patients naked on cold floors, tied to beds, living in conditions that the reporter compared to a medieval dungeon.
The Baldini report led to the landmark federal lawsuit Halderman v. Pennhurst State School & Hospital, filed in 1974. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1984 that the Eleventh Amendment limited federal courts' ability to order state officials to comply with state law. However, the broader legal and political impact was decisive: Pennsylvania began deinstitutionalizing Pennhurst's residents, moving them into community-based group homes. The last residents left in 1987, and the facility was closed.
Since closure, the campus has been in limbo. The buildings have deteriorated severely: collapsed roofs, flooding, vandalism, and decades of weather have turned the institutional buildings into some of the most visually dramatic ruins in the Northeast. A seasonal haunted house attraction, "Pennhurst Asylum," operates in some of the buildings during Halloween season, which has been controversial given the facility's real history of suffering. A preservation effort is ongoing but underfunded. Most of the campus is not open to the public outside of the haunted house season. The buildings are structurally dangerous, and unauthorized access is trespassing.
2. Carrie Blast Furnaces
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The Carrie Blast Furnaces are two surviving blast furnaces from the Homestead Steel Works, the U.S. Steel plant that was once one of the largest steelmaking facilities in the world. They stand on the south bank of the Monongahela River in Rankin and Swissvale, just outside Pittsburgh, and they are the most significant surviving remnants of Pittsburgh's steel-making past. If you want to understand what American industrial power looked like at its peak, stand at the base of Carrie Furnaces No. 6 and No. 7 and look up.
The Homestead Steel Works was established by Andrew Carnegie in the 1880s and became the site of one of the most violent labor confrontations in American history: the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which striking steelworkers fought a pitched battle with Pinkerton agents hired by Carnegie's manager, Henry Clay Frick. Seven workers and three Pinkertons were killed. The strike was broken, the union was crushed, and Carnegie Steel (later U.S. Steel) operated the Homestead Works as a non-union facility for the next four decades. The plant expanded enormously through the early 20th century, eventually stretching for miles along the Monongahela River.
The Carrie Furnaces themselves were built between 1881 and 1907. At their peak, each furnace produced about 1,000 tons of pig iron per day, the raw material that was then processed into steel in the adjacent open hearth shops and Bessemer converters. The furnaces operated nearly continuously for over 70 years, shutting down only for maintenance and relining. U.S. Steel closed the Homestead Works in 1986 as part of the broader collapse of the domestic steel industry. Most of the massive complex was demolished, and the site was redeveloped as The Waterfront, a shopping and entertainment district. The two Carrie Furnaces were saved from demolition by preservation advocates.
Today, the Carrie Furnaces are a National Historic Landmark, managed by Rivers of Steel, a heritage conservation organization. They offer guided tours that take visitors through the furnace complex, including the casting house, the skip hoist, the stoves (massive brick structures that preheated air before it was blasted into the furnace), and the furnace tops. The scale is overwhelming: the furnaces tower over everything around them, and the complexity of the piping, ductwork, and structural steel is a testament to the engineering that made Pittsburgh the steel capital of the world. Tours are scheduled and ticketed through the Rivers of Steel website. The site is not open for unsupervised exploration.
3. Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike
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The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike is one of the most unusual abandoned places in the United States: a 13-mile stretch of the original Pennsylvania Turnpike, including two tunnels through the Allegheny Mountains, that was bypassed in 1968 when the highway was rerouted to accommodate higher traffic volumes and modern vehicle speeds. The old road has been sitting there ever since, a four-lane divided highway complete with lane markings, guardrails, and tunnel lighting fixtures, slowly being reclaimed by the forest and used by nobody except hikers, cyclists, and the occasional adventurer.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike, which opened on October 1, 1940, was the first long-distance limited-access highway in the United States, a direct ancestor of the Interstate Highway System that would be authorized 16 years later. The original route followed the grade of the never-completed South Pennsylvania Railroad, a project from the 1880s that had bored several tunnels through the Allegheny ridges before running out of money. The Turnpike Commission used those existing tunnels, which saved enormous construction costs and time.
The abandoned section runs from Breezewood to the area east of the Sideling Hill Tunnel, crossing through the Rays Hill Tunnel (3,532 feet long) and the Sideling Hill Tunnel (6,782 feet long). By the 1960s, the two-lane tunnels had become bottlenecks on an increasingly busy highway: traffic had to slow down, merge from four lanes to two, pass through the tunnel, and then merge back. The Turnpike Commission built new tunnels and roadway on a parallel alignment, and the old section was closed.
The Pike2Bike Trail, a project to convert the abandoned turnpike into a dedicated cycling and hiking trail, has been developing for years. Parts of the route are now officially open as a trail, while other sections remain in rougher condition. The tunnels are the main attraction: walking or cycling through a 6,782-foot tunnel in complete darkness (bring a headlamp), on an original 1940 roadway with the lane markings still faintly visible, is an experience unlike anything else in American urbex. The air in the tunnels is cold and damp, and water drips from the ceiling in places. The roads outside the tunnels are cracked and overgrown but still clearly recognizable as a four-lane highway. Access points vary; the most common starting points are near Breezewood and the Sideling Hill rest area.
4. Bethlehem Steel
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The Bethlehem Steel plant in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was once the second-largest steel producer in the United States and one of the most important industrial facilities in the world. The blast furnaces, casting houses, and structural steel of the Bethlehem plant produced the beams that built the Golden Gate Bridge, the George Washington Bridge, Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, Madison Square Garden, and thousands of other structures across the 20th century. Bethlehem Steel also built warships: during World War II, the company's shipyards produced 1,121 ships, more than any other builder in the country. The plant in Bethlehem employed over 30,000 workers at its peak.
The company's origins date to 1857, when the Saucona Iron Company was founded on the south bank of the Lehigh River. The company grew through the late 19th and early 20th centuries under the leadership of Charles M. Schwab, who had previously been the first president of U.S. Steel. Under Schwab, Bethlehem Steel pioneered the wide-flange structural beam (the I-beam), the innovation that made modern skyscraper construction possible. The company became one of the largest corporations in America, a pillar of the military-industrial complex, and the economic engine of the entire Lehigh Valley.
The decline mirrored the broader collapse of American steel. Foreign competition, particularly from Japan and South Korea, eroded market share through the 1970s and 1980s. Labor costs, pension obligations, and the cost of environmental compliance squeezed margins. Bethlehem Steel filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and was liquidated in 2003. The Bethlehem plant, which had already been shutting down in stages since 1995, ceased operations entirely.
The former plant site has been partially redeveloped as SteelStacks, an arts and entertainment campus that incorporates the preserved blast furnaces as a dramatic backdrop. The five blast furnaces stand in a row along the Lehigh River, connected by a maze of piping, conveyors, and structural steel that has been stabilized but not restored. The SteelStacks campus hosts concerts, festivals, and events, with the furnaces illuminated at night. The National Museum of Industrial History, located on the former plant grounds, tells the broader story of American industry through Bethlehem Steel's rise and fall. The blast furnace area is partially accessible through guided tours offered by the museum and SteelStacks. Not all areas of the former plant are open to the public; some sections remain fenced and restricted.
5. Concrete City (Nanticoke)
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Concrete City is a row of 20 duplex houses built by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1911 for its coal miners in Nanticoke, Luzerne County. The houses were constructed using Thomas Edison's innovative single-pour concrete construction method, and they represent one of the most unusual examples of early 20th-century workers' housing in the United States. They are also one of the most indestructible abandoned structures you will ever see, which is both the reason they were built and the reason they are still standing.
Thomas Edison developed his single-pour concrete house concept in the early 1900s as a solution to the urban housing crisis. The idea was to build an entire house, including walls, floors, roof, stairs, bathtubs, and even picture frames, in a single pour of concrete using reusable steel forms. The Concrete City houses in Nanticoke were among the first applications of this method. Each duplex unit provided two attached three-bedroom homes with indoor plumbing and electricity, amenities that were superior to the typical coal company housing of the era.
The houses were immediately unpopular. They were cold, damp, and acoustically terrible: sounds carried through the concrete walls and floors with no dampening. The miners and their families called them "mushroom houses" because they were constantly damp and, in winter, the temperature differential between the heated interior and the massive thermal mass of the concrete walls caused persistent condensation and mold. The company vacated the houses around 1924, barely 13 years after construction, and attempted to demolish them. They could not. The reinforced concrete was so strong that dynamite barely chipped it. The demolition crew gave up, and the houses have been standing in the woods above Nanticoke ever since.
Over 100 years later, the structures are largely intact. The roofs are gone, the interiors are open to the sky, and vegetation has colonized every surface, but the concrete walls, floors, and stairs remain structurally sound. Graffiti covers virtually every surface. The site has become one of the most popular urbex destinations in northeastern Pennsylvania. Concrete City is on Luzerne County land and is technically publicly accessible, though the access road is rough and parking is limited. The site is not maintained. Watch for uneven floors, open stairwells, and debris.
6. SCI Cresson (State Correctional Institution, Cresson Township)
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SCI Cresson is a decommissioned state prison in Cresson Township, Cambria County, about 10 miles west of Altoona in the Allegheny Mountains of central Pennsylvania. The facility has a layered institutional history that spans over a century: it began as a tuberculosis sanatorium, was converted to a state prison, operated for decades as a minimum- and medium-security correctional facility, and was closed in 2013 as part of Pennsylvania's prison consolidation program.
The original facility was built in 1913 as the Cresson State Sanatorium for Tuberculosis, one of several state-funded TB hospitals built across Pennsylvania during the tuberculosis epidemic of the early 20th century. Like other sanatoriums of the era, it was sited in the mountains for the fresh air believed to be therapeutic for lung disease. The buildings followed the pavilion plan common to TB hospitals: long, low structures with large windows and open-air porches (cure porches) where patients were exposed to sunlight and mountain air as the primary treatment.
When antibiotics made sanatorium treatment obsolete in the 1950s and 1960s, the state converted the facility to a prison. SCI Cresson opened as a correctional institution in 1987, housing minimum- and medium-security inmates in the converted sanatorium buildings and new additions. The facility held about 1,400 inmates at capacity. Budget pressures and declining prison populations led to the decision to close it in 2013. Governor Tom Corbett announced the closure as part of a cost-cutting initiative, and the last inmates were transferred in 2013.
Since closure, the campus has sat largely empty. The former sanatorium buildings, with their distinctive cure porches and institutional architecture, are in declining condition. The prison-era additions, including cellblocks, administrative buildings, and support structures, add a layer of institutional starkness to the campus. The property is state-owned and not open to the public. Unauthorized access is trespassing on state property. The site is visible from adjacent roads, and the institutional architecture is clearly visible from the Cresson area.
7. Alvira Bunkers (Union County)
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Hidden in the forests of Union County, about 15 miles west of Lewisburg, dozens of reinforced concrete bunkers sit beneath earthen mounds in orderly rows among the trees. These are the remains of the Alvira Ammunition Storage Depot, a World War II-era facility built by the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps to store TNT and other explosives manufactured at the adjacent Pennsylvania Ordnance Works. The bunkers are what remain of a military-industrial operation that erased an entire small town from the map.
In 1941, the federal government condemned and seized the entire town of Alvira, population approximately 100, under eminent domain to build the ordnance works and ammunition depot. The residents were given 30 days to vacate. Their homes, churches, a school, and a cemetery were demolished or relocated. The government built a TNT manufacturing plant (the Pennsylvania Ordnance Works) and an adjacent storage facility consisting of over 100 earth-covered concrete bunkers, called igloos, designed to contain explosions in the event of an accidental detonation.
The ordnance works operated through World War II and was deactivated after the war. The TNT plant was demolished, but the bunkers were retained and used for various military storage purposes through the Cold War. The property was eventually transferred to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, and the former depot is now part of State Game Land 252.
Today, the bunkers are still standing, scattered through the woods in rows that follow the original military layout. The reinforced concrete structures are partially buried under their earthen mounds, with heavy steel blast doors (some open, some sealed) at the entrances. The interiors are dark, damp, and typically empty, though some still have faint markings from their military use. The surrounding forest has reclaimed the roads and cleared areas, but the geometric pattern of the bunker rows is still clearly visible from aerial photographs and on the ground. The State Game Land is open to the public for hunting and hiking, and the bunkers can be accessed on foot from various trails and forest roads. There is no formal interpretive infrastructure. Bring a flashlight.
8. Kinzua Bridge (McKean County)
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The Kinzua Bridge was once the tallest and longest railroad viaduct in the world: a 2,053-foot-long steel structure that soared 301 feet above the floor of the Kinzua Creek valley in McKean County, in the forested mountains of northwestern Pennsylvania. For 121 years, from its original construction in 1882 through its destruction by a tornado in 2003, it was one of the most impressive pieces of engineering in the state. What remains today is equally impressive: the twisted wreckage of eleven of the bridge's twenty towers, lying in the valley below the surviving section like the skeleton of some enormous iron creature.
The original bridge was built in 1882 by the New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad (later the Erie Railroad) to carry coal and timber trains across the Kinzua valley. It was constructed of wrought iron and completed in just 94 days, an astonishing pace for a structure of that size. When it was finished, it was the highest railroad bridge in the world, a record it held for two years until the Garabit Viaduct in France surpassed it. In 1900, the bridge was completely rebuilt in steel to handle heavier modern locomotives, using the original stone foundations and pier locations.
The railroad discontinued service across the bridge in 1959, and the bridge sat unused for years. In 1963, the state of Pennsylvania purchased the bridge and the surrounding land, creating Kinzua Bridge State Park. A tourist excursion railroad operated across the bridge from the 1980s until 2002. Then, on July 21, 2003, a tornado with winds estimated at 100 miles per hour struck the bridge and toppled eleven of the twenty towers, snapping the steel like twigs and sending thousands of tons of metal crashing into the valley floor. The remaining nine towers on the north end survived intact.
Pennsylvania rebuilt the surviving section as the Kinzua Skywalk, a pedestrian walkway that extends 624 feet out from the north end of the bridge and terminates at a glass-floored observation platform suspended 225 feet above the valley. The view straight down through the glass floor to the valley below is spectacular and vertigo-inducing. The twisted wreckage of the collapsed towers is visible from the Skywalk, scattered across the valley floor below. Kinzua Bridge State Park is open year-round, and the Skywalk is free. Trails in the park lead to the valley floor, where you can walk among the collapsed towers.
9. Yellow Dog Village (Armstrong County)
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Yellow Dog Village is a cluster of abandoned company houses in the woods of Armstrong County, about 50 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. The village is named for the "yellow dog contracts" that coal companies required miners to sign, agreements in which the worker pledged not to join a labor union as a condition of employment. The name is a reminder that these houses were not gifts from benevolent employers but instruments of labor control: you lived in the company house, bought from the company store, and if you tried to organize, you lost your home along with your job.
The village was built in the early 20th century by a mining company to house workers at a nearby coal operation. The houses are typical of Pennsylvania coal patch architecture: small, wood-frame, two-story duplexes with minimal amenities, built in rows on a hillside above the mine. Each unit provided basic shelter for a mining family. The houses were functional but bare, with no insulation, minimal plumbing, and heating by coal stove.
When the mines closed, the houses were abandoned. The company had no further use for them, and the miners moved on to other jobs and other towns. The village sat in the woods, slowly deteriorating. Over the decades, it became one of the most visited and photographed urbex sites in western Pennsylvania. The houses are in various states of collapse: some have lost their roofs, others have buckled walls, and a few remain standing with their original structure largely intact. The interiors show traces of the families who lived there: wallpaper patterns, linoleum floors, built-in shelving.
Yellow Dog Village is on private property, and access status has varied over the years. At various times, the landowner has tolerated visitors; at other times, no-trespassing signs have been posted. Check current access status before visiting. The village is accessible via a dirt road off a rural highway. There are no facilities. The surrounding forest is dense, and the houses are partially hidden by vegetation. The site is a powerful reminder of the living conditions of Pennsylvania's coal mining workforce and the disposable nature of company housing in the extractive economy.
10. Richmond Generating Station (Philadelphia)
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The Richmond Generating Station is an abandoned coal-fired power plant on the Delaware River waterfront in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia. The facility is one of the largest abandoned industrial structures in the city, a massive complex of boiler houses, turbine halls, coal handling equipment, and smokestacks that once generated electricity for the Philadelphia Electric Company (PECO, now part of Exelon).
The plant was built in stages during the early to mid-20th century, expanding as Philadelphia's electricity demand grew. The facility burned coal delivered by barge on the Delaware River, converting it to steam that drove turbine generators. At its peak, the plant generated enough electricity to power a significant portion of Philadelphia's grid. The architecture is classic mid-century industrial: massive reinforced concrete and steel-frame structures with tall smokestacks, large windows (many now broken), and the blocky, utilitarian forms that characterize power plants of this era.
The plant was decommissioned as part of the broader transition away from coal-fired generation. Stricter EPA regulations on emissions, combined with the availability of cheaper natural gas, made coal plants like Richmond economically unviable. The facility was shut down and has sat vacant on the Delaware waterfront since.
Since closure, the Richmond Generating Station has become one of the most dramatic abandoned industrial sites in Philadelphia. The scale of the buildings is enormous: the boiler house rises several stories above the surrounding neighborhood, and the smokestacks are visible from miles away. The interior, where accessible, contains the remains of the coal handling systems, boilers, control rooms, and turbine hall. The Delaware River waterfront location adds to the visual impact, with the plant's industrial silhouette reflected in the water.
The site is on private property and is not open to the public. It is fenced and posted, and unauthorized access is trespassing. The structure is in deteriorating condition, with significant structural concerns. Exterior views are possible from adjacent streets and from the Delaware River waterfront. The future of the site is uncertain: waterfront redevelopment plans for the Port Richmond area may eventually include the former power plant site, but no concrete plans have been announced.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Abandoned Places in Pennsylvania
How many abandoned places are there in Pennsylvania?
The Urbex Maps database currently lists 373 verified abandoned locations across Pennsylvania, including steel mills, coal mines, hospitals, prisons, military installations, and infrastructure. The actual number of abandoned structures in the state is certainly much higher, as Pennsylvania's industrial and mining history has left thousands of derelict structures across the coal fields, mill towns, and former manufacturing centers. The anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania alone contains hundreds of abandoned mines, breaker buildings, and company towns.
Is urbex legal in Pennsylvania?
Trespassing is a summary offense in Pennsylvania under 18 Pa.C.S. 3503. Most abandoned industrial sites, hospitals, and prisons are on private property and posted against trespassing. However, several spots in this guide are publicly accessible: the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike is on publicly accessible land, Kinzua Bridge is a state park, and the Alvira Bunkers are on State Game Land. Bethlehem Steel and Carrie Furnace offer organized tours. Always check the access status of a specific location before visiting.
What is the most famous abandoned place in Pennsylvania?
Pennhurst State School is the most infamous, owing to its documented history of patient abuse and the landmark legal case that resulted. Bethlehem Steel is the most historically significant industrial site, having produced the structural steel for many of America's most iconic buildings and bridges. The Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike is the most unusual, as it is an entire section of the nation's first superhighway left intact.
Can you tour Bethlehem Steel or Carrie Furnace?
Yes. The Carrie Blast Furnaces in Rankin/Swissvale offer guided tours through the Rivers of Steel organization. Tickets are available on their website. The Bethlehem Steel Stacks are part of the SteelStacks arts campus in Bethlehem, and the adjacent National Museum of Industrial History offers exhibits and tours. Not all areas of either site are open to unsupervised exploration.
What is Concrete City?
Concrete City is a row of 20 duplex houses in Nanticoke, Luzerne County, built in 1911 using Thomas Edison's single-pour concrete construction method. The houses were abandoned after barely 13 years of use because they were damp, cold, and acoustically terrible. When the mining company tried to demolish them with dynamite, the concrete proved too strong to destroy. The houses have been standing in the woods for over 100 years.
Is the Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike safe to explore?
The Abandoned Turnpike is generally safe for hiking and cycling, but the tunnels are completely dark and require a reliable headlamp or flashlight. The road surface is cracked and uneven. Water drips from tunnel ceilings in places, and the floor can be wet and slippery. Dress in layers, as the tunnel interiors are significantly colder than the outside air. Parts of the route are being formally developed as the Pike2Bike Trail, with improved access points and surface conditions.
Conclusion: Pennsylvania, the industrial heartland's richest ruins
Pennsylvania's abandoned places are monuments to the industrial age that built modern America. The blast furnaces of Pittsburgh and Bethlehem forged the steel that raised the skylines of a dozen cities. The coal mines of the anthracite fields powered the factories of the Northeast. The turnpike tunnels pioneered the superhighway era. The institutions, from Pennhurst to SCI Cresson, reflected the state's approach to its most vulnerable citizens. And through it all, the workers lived in company houses like Yellow Dog Village and Concrete City, built to serve the company and abandoned when the company no longer needed them.
With 373 spots on the Urbex Maps atlas and more added regularly, Pennsylvania is one of the most important states in the country for urban exploration focused on industrial and institutional history. The 10 spots in this guide are starting points, not endpoints. Every valley in the coal fields and every river town in the steel belt has its own layer of ruins. The GPS coordinates are free. The map is live. Go find what Pennsylvania left behind.
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