For all of you urban explorers out there, I’ve got a fun spot for you. The Concrete City in Nanticoke, PA, is a short drive southwest of Wilkes-Barre. Ripe with history, graffiti, and full of abandoned homes to explore, this is the perfect spot for a day trip.
Back in August, my friend Jaye hit me up to go on an adventure with her to Concrete City. She sent me a link to the Uncovering PA blog about it and after checking it out, I eagerly agreed. There were a few things that stood out to me. First, the City is open to the public, which means you don’t have to worry about trespassing (a blessing). Secondly, its history. I love checking out old places just to learn about what things were like back when they were in all their glory and imagine how people lived back then.
Our Trek In
We decided to go on a beautiful Tuesday-birds were chirping, warm air, and playlist at the ready. It’s about a 2-hour drive from Philly, so plan accordingly. Tucked away from society, you have to park along Front Street and hike your way to the City. The coordinates for the city are 41.190043, -75.975617. From my understanding, there are two ways in. Uncovering PA explains the first option where you follow a trail from Front Street until you see the ruins. The other way–I don’t even know how Jaye and I found it tbh- is hiking from Front Street to Hughes Street and following a trail behind some houses, which takes you to a different side of the city. As far as I can tell, both ways work great, they just pop you out at different locations.
Jaye and I were incredibly excited when we got our first glimpse of the city, no more than a half-mile into our hike. There were two duplexes, one on either side of us, and our hearts soared knowing we officially made it. Within seconds, we realized we could smell a bonfire. It was a strong scent, but we didn’t see any smoke, nor could we tell what direction it came from. Only mildly perturbed, we decided to make a loop of all the houses, checking out each duplex top to bottom.
Some Brief Background Info on the concrete city
The Concrete City is 20 duplex homes laid out in a rectangular shape. There’s a basement and two floors to check out in each home. Jaye and I felt comfortable going up to the second floor and poking around but it’s still not the safest. There used to be a beautiful courtyard in the middle of the homes, complete with a swimming pool for the families to enjoy, but now the entire area is overgrown. (I found some really cute mushrooms though so that was definitely a plus). The houses are built from concrete and metal rods, which is a bit bizarre at first.
According to PA Bucket List, after a mere 11 years of inhabitance, the entire city was abandoned. This was primarily due to septic problems (or rather, a “lack of a septic system” problem), in 1924. Concrete buildings are also apparently quite damp and dreary to live in no matter the septic system.
While the houses are identical (structurally), I would still recommend checking all of them out anyway. We found that the graffiti in all the houses are unique and fun in their own way, and it’s also cool to see how each house is falling to the elements after nearly 100 years of abandonment. Jaye and I spent the whole day going house to house, checking both sides of the duplexes. We CAUTIOUSLY checked out the basements and found that many of them were flooding. Some of the houses were even starting to sink into the ground. We decided it best to avoid spending much time in those houses.
Disclaimer: The Concrete City is an inherently dangerous environment. Please proceed with caution at all times. You may visit at your own risk. Miniventure Mac is here to inform you what is available to check out, but you are responsible for assuming the risk of personal injury, damage to personal property, or any other incidents that may occur while visiting Concrete City.
We took a short break for lunch in one of the duplexes. Jaye told me afterward that this was her favorite part of the trip because “all I could think about was how, over 100 years ago, some coal miner and his family sat and enjoyed a meal in the same spot. It was beautiful and haunting to be so starkly reminded of how full life in these houses used to be.” And it really was.
About halfway through checking out the homes, we came across a nice friendly snake. I actually accidentally almost stepped on it when coming out of one of the houses and my heart skipped several beats, to put it lightly. Not a fan of snakes. Never have been, never will be. I blame that on my dad because he’s not scared of anything except snakes. So again, do be careful if you decide to visit Concrete City; there’s plenty of wildlife out there.
On the plus side, there are also some cute mushrooms. Please, enjoy this picture:
by Melinda MacArthur
Our Horror Movie Moment of the Day
Perhaps the most frightening thing we came across was when we were exploring one of the flooded buildings. As far as we could tell, the flooding was exclusively in the basements when we went, but by now there may be even more on the ground level. We climbed down just a stair or two leading into the basement before realizing the whole basement was entirely flooded. Easily a good 4 or 5 feet of water.
Jaye shined her flashlight to see if there was any cool graffiti and there was none. No graffiti. In all the other buildings that had flooding, there was at least some graffiti that was likely put there before the flooding. The only thing we could see was “SAVE ME” written in all caps on the far side of the basement, inches above the water level. A chill ran through both of us, and suddenly the air felt a bit colder. I have no doubt that it was just some kid goofing off but still, to swim across the water to write that ??? Terrifying. I hope they didn’t get some kind of infection from the water since Lord knows what’s festering in it. Jaye says that to this day it still creeps her out a bit.
At long last, we made our way right back to where we started. In the last house we went in we finally found answers to the mystery of the bonfire. Someone apparently had a bonfire in the house, no more than maybe a day or so prior to us arriving. The whole room was black with soot, and the air was pungent. Bottles littered the ground, and it was outright depressing to think what little regard some people have for this place.
A bit of good
As we were leaving, we passed a man cleaning up the area. He had a plastic bag and a trash picker in hand and that helped us feel a bit better about people doing their part to keep this historical location clean.
A tip for myself for future travels is to talk to strangers more. I regret not asking the guy about the area because he probably had some form of connection to it, given that he was taking his time to freshen it up a bit.
Overall though, it was a wonderful day trip, and Jaye and I have plans to do some more urbex exploring in the future, so stay tuned for that 🙂
Until next time,
-MAC
P.S. Shoutout Jaye for the dope pictures
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