Picher, Oklahoma: The Mining Town That Poisoned Its Own Children

In the far northeastern corner of Oklahoma, a town called Picher was once the most productive mining site

in the entire Tri-State Lead and Zinc District. It was founded in 1913, after prospectors struck ore on

land belonging to Harry Crawfish of the Quapaw Nation, and by 1926 it held more than 14,000 residents.

Some 248 mills processed lead and zinc around the clock, supplying more than half the zinc and forty-five

percent of the lead the country used in World War I, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Every ton of ore left behind pulverized waste rock called chat, and the chat went into piles that reached

200 feet high. Children played on them, rode bikes up their slopes, and swam in the contaminated ponds at

their base. Studies in the 1990s found that roughly a third of Picher's youngest children carried blood

lead levels above the federal danger threshold, many times the state average. School counselor Rebecca Jim

watched the damage arrive in her office: learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and kidney trouble,

all of it traced back to the gray dust those kids had been breathing their whole lives.

Timeline of Events

1913: Prospectors strike lead and zinc ore in Ottawa County, Oklahoma.

1918: The town of Picher is officially incorporated.

1926: The population peaks at 14,252.

1967: The last mines close in the Pitcher field.

1979: Tar Creek turns orange from acid mine drainage running at a million gallons a day.

1983: The EPA designates the Tar Creek Superfund Site.

1994: A study finds 34 percent of Picher children have lead poisoning.

1997: Rebecca Jim co-founds the LEAD Agency.

2006: The Army Corps finds about a third of Picher's studied acreage undermined, with 286 locations flagged

and 54 of them under or beside a house or business.

2008: An EF4 tornado kills 6 people and destroys more than 150 homes.

2009: Picher ceases operating as a municipality on September 1; the 2010 census records a population of

20. Formal dissolution follows in November 2013.

2015: Gary Linderman, the last holdout, dies at 60.

Historical Significance

Picher is one of the most complete cases of environmental sacrifice in American history. The town gave its

ore, its labor, and its children's health to fuel two world wars, and the district generated more than

$310 million in minerals between 1908 and 1930 alone. When the ground itself was condemned, the federal

government funded a buyout through the state relocation trust. The Tar Creek Superfund Site is still one

of the most contaminated locations in the country, with acid mine drainage running at a million gallons a

day into waterways that feed Grand Lake O' the Cherokees, a regional drinking-water reservoir. The Quapaw

Nation now holds an EPA cleanup contract, but full remediation is decades out.

Sources

Oklahoma Historical Society Encyclopedia

EPA Tar Creek Superfund records

National Weather Service Tulsa tornado documentation

Rebecca Jim and the LEAD Agency reporting

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study, 2006

If you liked this: Episode 178, Gauley Bridge, West Virginia. Another company town where the people doing

the work were the last to learn what it was doing to them.

Hometown History explores forgotten stories from small-town America. The overlooked events, hidden triumphs,

and buried tragedies that shaped the country we live in. New episodes every Tuesday. Find every episode at

mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history

Episode 217 | Hometown History | Hosted by Shane Waters

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