According to legend — the first Roman Catholic Priest to live in Centralia (Father Daniel Ignatius McDermott) was assaulted by several members of the Molly Maguires in 1869 and subsequently cursed the land around the town and proclaimed that nothing but the Church would eventually remain in Centralia. In June of 1948 — just three years after the end of World War II — United Airlines Flight 624 traveling between San Diego and New York crashed into a mountain between the Pennsylvania towns of Aristes and Centralia. But the event that would ultimately doom Centralia happened around Memorial Day of 1962 — when a crew doing a controlled burn of a landfill around Centralia did not extinguish the blaze and the fire seeped into an old mine shaft that was not properly sealed.