While traveling the back-roads paralleling state highway 69, just south of the Oklahoma/Kansas state line, we stumbled upon the abandoned town of Picher, Oklahoma.
There was just something about the place – the large water tower, just like the ones common in so many small towns – with “Picher – Gorillas – Since 1918” written on it, looming above nothing but a checker-board square of bare slabs – and no town – that beckoned us to stop and have a look around.
Picher – The Most Toxic Toxic Town in America
Only later, after we returned home, did we watch a very interesting YouTube documentary about the Oklahoma ghost town of Picher and learned the full story about why the town had been abandoned. The land was once part of a reservation belonging to the Quapaw tribe of Native Americans, only to be taken from them by the U.S. government, along with the Picher Lead Company, by what most would agree were less than honorable means.
Unable to convince the Quapaws to sell, the Bureau of Indian Affairs declared many of the tribe to be mentally incompetent and seized their land.
We learned by watching “The Town of Silent Poison” that lead contamination and acid runoff from abandoned mine shafts, along with the destruction wreaked by a massive tornado, are why Picher, Oklahoma has become a modern day ghost town.
The Town That Won the War
Called by some “The town that won the war”, the mines in the area produced more than half the lead used for ammunition during World War 1 as well as a significant portion of that used during WWII. Zinc from the mines was used in the manufacture of tanks and other military equipment.
A Toxic Legacy
Because the fact that numerous lead and zinc mine shafts were abandoned and subsequently filled with groundwater, and because mining tailings or “chat” was used as road material, the area has the highest lead contamination of any place in North America. Tragically, lead mining waste has affected the health of adults and children in Picher and surrounding areas for decades.
It has been estimated that more than 37% of all the former residents of the town were affected by some degree of lead poisoning. The fact that the mining “chat” was used for road paving and home-building added insult to literal injury, resulting in further lead poisoning of residents of other nearby communities, including the town of Miami, OK.
As if All That Wasn’t Enough
As if lead poisoning, unemployment, buildings falling into sinkholes caused by thousands of abandoned mine shafts and being declared an EPA superfund site wasn’t enough to kill the town, an EF-4 tornado struck the place on May, 10 2008. The next year, the State of Oklahoma dis-incorporated the town and aside from a few holdouts, most residents moved on to other places.
Some of the land has reverted to its original owners, the Quapaw Nation, and although the tribe has seen some benefits after being enlisted in the massive cleanup effort, their once pristine home will never be the same as it was before mining began.
Thousands of Abandoned Mine Shafts
It’s hard to imagine, driving the many empty streets of Picher, where almost no structures stand today, that at one time, in 1926, more than 14,000 souls lived here. It’s been estimated that about that many more miners commuted here, using an extensive trolley network, from as far away as Joplin and Carthage Missouri.
In the vicinity of Picher, Oklahoma there are more than 14,000 abandoned mine shafts and piles containing more than 70 million tons of mine tailings.
The Town of Silent Poison
If you’d like to learn more about the history of Picher Oklahoma, we recommend watching the documentary, “The Town of Silent Poison”, which you can view below. Also, if you happen to be traveling through the area, the Dobson Museum in Miami Oklahoma has some very interesting exhibits about the town and the area’s mining history.
To Stop and Remember
Like another place we recently traveled to, Centralia, Pennsylvania, an abandoned town that has literally been on fire since 1963, Picher, Oklahoma probably isn’t going to be high on everyone’s bucket list of places to visit.
Perhaps it’s a somewhat of a morbid fascination that we have with places like this, but seeing places like Picher and Centralia firsthand helps us remember that as a country, and even as a species, we need to do better and treat our planet more like a home, and not like someplace that we simply trash and move on from.
