10 Places You Don’t Want to Visit.#1

Many articles have been written documenting the world’s greatest travel destinations.  However, this list will be examining some locations that you don’t want to visit or would be better off avoiding.  In planning a family vacation or cross-country trip, I would recommend staying away from these places.  Many of the areas have a serious pollution problem or are extremely dangerous.  It is unfortunate that so many people are raised under such poor sanitary conditions.

10. Bubbly Creek

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Bubbly Creek is the nickname of a section of the Chicago River located in the South Branch.  The area surrounding Bubbly Creek was originally a wetland, but during the 19th century channels were dredged and the South Fork became an open sewer line for the local stockyards, especially the Union Stock Yards. During this time, slaughter houses dumped large amounts of waste, such as blood and entrails into Bubbly Creek.  The creek received so much blood and animal remains that the water began to bubble with methane and hydrogen sulfide gas. The process of decomposition created the chemical reaction, which led to the nickname Bubbly Creek.  In 1906, the area and its history were included in the Upton Sinclair novel titled The Jungle, which criticized the American meat packing industry.
Today
By the 1990s, the only living animal in the creek was a large number of bloodworms.  The worms are feeding on a thick mass of rotting blood which is located on the river bed.  Bubbly Creek has become hypoxic due to the oxygen depletion. The creek remains highly toxic and the surrounding area is full of a rancid smell. A small amount of vegetation has returned in recent decades and the area has become occupied by residential development.  A program to oxygenate the creek by continuously injecting compressed air into the water has been met with limited success.  Swimming through the slimy surface of Bubbly Creek is not recommended and many Chicago locals stay away from the creek entirely.

9. Centralia, Pennsylvania

Location: Columbia County, Pennsylvania

The town of Centralia, Pennsylvania is a location that was built around the coal mining industry.  In the past, the area was served by two separate railroads.  However, all rail services ended in 1966 when the coal mining industry went out of business.  Centralia once held seven churches, five hotels, twenty-seven saloons, two theatres, a bank, a post office, and fourteen general stores.  In 1962 a fire was ignited in one of the large mines below Centralia.  The fire quickly spread throughout the vast mining system, ultimately making the town practically uninhabitable.
It is not fully understood how the fire was started, but one theory suggests that the event occurred in May of 1962 when the Centralia Borough Council hired five people  to clean up the town landfill, which was located in an abandoned strip-mine pit.  The men did not extinguish the fire correctly and it spread through a hole in the rock pit and then into the abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia.  In the late 1960s and 1970s dozens of town residents were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning.  Sink holes began to appear in the city limits and steam ports were often reported.

 

Today
The town’s population has dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to 12 in 2005, and 9 in 2007.  Centralia is now the least-populous municipality in Pennsylvania.  In 1984, the U.S. Congress allocated more than $42 million for relocation efforts and most people accepted a buyout and moved.  In 1992, all property in the borough was claimed under eminent domain by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  This means the government took ownership of all land in the town.
In 2002 the U.S. Post Office revoked Centralia’s zip code.  Few homes remain standing in Centralia and most of the abandoned buildings have been demolished by humans or nature.  The borough is littered with signs warning of unstable ground and carbon monoxide poisoning.  Smoke and steam can be seen rising from various locations in the town.  The underground fire is still burning and will continue to do so for a predicted 250 more years.  Interestingly, Centralia was the inspiration for the 1991 cult film Nothing But Trouble, which was written by Dan Aykroyd.

8. Dallol

Location: Afar Region, Ethiopia

Dallol is a ghost town in northern Ethiopia. It is located in Administrative Zone 2 of the Afar Region in the Afar Depression.  The Afar Depression is a geological depression near the Horn of Africa.  In 1918, a railway was constructed from the port of Mersa Fatma in Eritrea and then to a point 28 km from Dallol.  However, after World War II it was removed by the British administration, as international trade routes had expanded.
The area is home to the Dallol volcano, which is encompassed by the Dallol Mountain.  The village is populated by impressive salt canyons.  The Dallol Co. of Asmara sold salt from the site to India from 1951-1953.  In the 1960s, the Parsons Company from the United States conducted a series of geological surveys at Dallol.  By 1965, about 10,000 holes had been drilled at 65 separate locations.  In 1926, the Dallal volcano experienced an eruption leaving a 30m wide crater and forming geological hot springs.
Today
Dallol has been described as a ghost town with only a couple standing buildings.  The structures are made of salt blocks.  The town currently holds the record for the highest average temperature for an inhabited location on Earth.  The average annual temperature between the years 1960-1966 was 34°C (94°F).  It regularly reaches over 115°F.  Dallol is also one of the most remote places on the planet.  There are no roads and the only regular transportation service provided is by camel caravans, which travel to the area to collect salt.
Many impressive hot springs do exist at Dallol, giving a stunning view of yellow and red hydrothermal deposits.  However, Dallol lies in northeastern Ethiopia close to the disputed Eritrean border. This fact, along with some hostile Afar tribesmen, make the area dangerous and several armed attacks on tourist convoys have occurred in recent years.  If you really want to visit Dallol, it would be a good idea to join a convoy of 4-wheel drive vehicles, which are accompanied by armed guards, and occasionally bring visitors to the Dallol springs.

7. Hanford Site

Location: Hanford, Washington State


Hanford was a small agricultural community in Benton County, Washington, United States.  In 1943, the town was evacuated, along with the town of White Bluffs, in order to make room for the nuclear production facility known as the Hanford Site.  The Hanford Site was one of the first and biggest nuclear production centers during World War II.  It was home to the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world.  During the Cold War, the Hanford Site was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five massive plutonium processing complexes.
These devices produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.  Waste disposal practices were inadequate during early nuclear testing and production in the United States.  In the 1980s, the U.S. government released documents confirming that Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River.  This contamination has threatened the health of residents and the ecosystem.

Today
The weapons production reactors at the Hanford Site were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the manufacturing process has left behind 53 million gallons (204,000 m³) of high-level radioactive waste.  The waste remains at the site and it represents two-thirds of all high-level radioactive waste in the U.S.  The Hanford Site is the most contaminated nuclear storage facility in the nation.  It is also the focus of the United States largest environmental cleanup.  The Hanford Site occupies 586 square miles (1,518 km2) and the Columbia River flows along the site for approximately 50 miles.
The site is bordered on the southeast by the Tri-Cities, a metropolitan area composed of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco, which is home to over 230,000 residents.  This area of Washington becomes warm in the summer and extra firefighters are stationed in the surrounding communities in case of toxic brush fires.

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