-Abandoned Oklahoma featured on News 9 and The News on 6 in Tulsa.
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Located eight miles north of Miami on U.S. Highway 69 in Ottawa County, Picher is Oklahoma’s most northeastern incorporated city. Its city limits adjoin the Kansas state line. In late 1913 the town developed around the lead and zinc ore strike on Harry Crawfish’s allotment. Picher’s name honored O. S. Picher, owner of the Picher Lead Company. Statewide newspapers reported that the town was born overnight. Picher incorporated in March 1918. It had a population of 9,726 in 1920, which peaked at 14,252 in 1926, at the height of mining. As mining activity decreased, the population dropped steadily to 5,848 in 1940 and to 2,553 in 1960.
Picher was the most productive mining field in the Tri-State Lead and Zinc District (Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri) and produced more than $20 billion in ore from 1917 to 1947. Over 50 percent of the lead and zinc metal consumed in World War I came from the Picher Field. During the mining boom years more than fourteen thousand men worked in its mines, and another four thousand worked in approximately fifteen hundred mining service businesses. Many of these workers commuted to work using an extensive trolley car system that ran all the way to Carthage, Missouri. In the subsequent years Picher could not attract new industry, because a majority of the real estate belonged to restricted Quapaw heirs and because the town had many mines distributed underneath the surface.
O. S. Picher provided the city’s first deep water well, thereby providing the beginning of a municipal water system. The leasing system employed for mining dictated that an ore reduction mill be built on each forty-acre tract. In 1927 there were 248 mills operating in the Picher Field, and this continued until the late 1930s when centralized milling resulted in mill consolidation. When lead and zinc mining finally ceased in 1967, pumping water from the mines ceased and they began to fill with water, accumulating 76,800 acre-feet of mine water under ground. This contaminated water began to seep from the mines in 1973. In 1983 the Picher area became part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Site program. With 1,400 mine shafts in the Picher area, 70 million tons of waste tailings, and 36 million tons of mill sand and sludge, environmental clean up was a monumental task.
In 2008, The EPA finished the clean up of the Superfund site. This was done by a mixture of buyouts, chat sales, on-site disposals, rural residential yard contamination cleanup, soil cleansing, and rural residential well sanitization. Overall totaling over one hundred and sixty million dollars before it was completed. Those who were willing to be bought out did so. Those who stayed behind were supplied with alternative ways to utilizing the wells that were contaminated. Additionally, chat that had once been piled on top of the soil was put back into the mines to support the land and reduce human exposure to lead dust.
After all of the work that was completed to make the town livable again, an F4 tornado came through the town of Picher on May 10, 2008. The tornado tragically took the lives of six people and injured at least one-hundred and fifty others.
In May of 2009 The Picher-Cardin school systems hosted its final graduating class & on July 1st the 90 year old district closed its doors forever.
Today, all that can be seen in the town is overgrown house foundations, and a few remaining buildings, which are now crudely spray painted as government property.
Fredas Cook, a long time resident, has put together a great database of history and pictures. For a lot of great information about Picher and Cardin, visit his siteHere.
To Unlock the map, Click Here.
This place was pretty cool and pretty far I must admit. Haha.
Kinda sad for someone who has been in the mines as a kid, swam in the millponds, played pool at Hoppe Ray’s. Picher was a sad place though due to all the contamination of the land and the bloodstreams of its youth.
I may go to visit this place in a few weeks. It’s quite sad. The entire population just left just a few months ago
Excelent Post! I got to go up there the weekend Pitcher was officially to be closed. People were moving things out of buildings and houses and the fire station was packing up their equipment. It was more crowded then I expected and everyone knew right off I wasn’t from there so I didn’t get a chance to explore many buildings with the cops near by overseeing the move. I did get to talk to Hoppy though at his Museum. He was great to talk to and was still pretty bitter about the whole thing. He said he thinks they are going to demolish the town and start strip mining the area again.
Excellent site with gorgeous pictures expertly documenting the death of an American small town. Should be a lesson to all of us. Some one should make a book about it.
I lived in Picher from birth to almost 9 yrs of age. I remember walking and playing on the chat piles. My sisters and I would walk from our house on 601 South Cherokee Street to town for our mom and get a few groceries. We would also pick wild asparagus growing in small wooded areas near the chat piles. We went to church at Mrs. Brown’s house. Joe Don Rooney also went there, I used to sit with him. We were so young. I really hate it for everyone that has lost their homes. I pray they will soon have new homes and memories. God Bless!
http://www.tarcreekfilm.com/trailer.php
In 1944 I was born there,on “C” st.
Remember playing on the piles, and taking
my Dad’s lunch to him at Eagle#9.
sad to see the town die
That’s good stuff guys. Funny how i shot some of the same things that you guys did.