Picher, Oklahoma Was POISONED & Left to ROT

In 1913, a drill rig got stuck in the mud on Quapaw land in northeast Oklahoma. The crew drilled where they stood and hit one of the richest lead-zinc deposits in American history. Within a decade, Picher was a booming mining town of fourteen thousand, its mills processing ten million pounds of ore a day, its metals filling more than half the bullets fired by American troops in World War I. Eagle-Picher became one of the most powerful mining companies in the country. Then the ore ran out, the pumps shut off, and the ground began to collapse. Tar Creek turned orange. A third of the children tested positive for lead poisoning. The federal government declared it one of the most toxic places in America, bought out every resident, and demolished the town. Picher, Oklahoma, was not abandoned. It was used up. Sources Arrell M. Gibson, Wilderness Bonanza: The Tri-State District of Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma (University of Oklahoma Press, 1972). C. Allan Mathews, "Picher," The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Oklahoma Historical Society. "History of Eagle-Picher Industries, Inc.," FundingUniverse / Company-Histories.com. Susan Saulny, "Welcome to Our Town. We Wish We Weren't Here," The New York Times, September 14, 2009. "Picher Mining Field, Northeast Oklahoma Subsidence Evaluation Report," U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, January 2006. Ryan Atkinson, "A Ghost Town Revival," Oxford American / Economic Hardship Reporting Project, 2025.