In 1913, lead turned Picher, Oklahoma, from farmland into a town of about 14,000; by 2010, only 20 residents remained, and chat piles covered parts of Ottawa County

Picher, Oklahoma sits in the state's far northeast corner, near cattle ranches and red dirt roads. It is no longer depicted on any working map; not because it never existed, but because it was formally dissolved as a city in 2009. In 1913, a lead and zinc strike on farmer Harry Crawfish's allotment near the Kansas border turned that same land into a town with a school, a Main Street, and a minor league ballpark within a few years. Its population peaked in 1926 at just over 14,000 people.

According to EPA’s records on the Tar Creek Superfund site, that boomtown of Picher is said to be at the center of one of the oldest and most complicated of the nation’s federally mandated clean-ups: a 40-square-mile portion of Ottawa County that still bears mountains of hazardous mining refuse known as "chat" despite the cessation of mining operations decades ago. This story might seem familiar. But it isn't. It is more odd, more ancient, and perhaps more preventable.

How a farm turned into a mining empire almost overnight


The 1913 discovery on Crawfish's land helped expand the broader Tri-State Mining District, spanning Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri, where mining had actually begun decades earlier, into one of the major lead-and-zinc ore districts in the United States. In its prime, around 14,000 workers labored in the mines underground while another 4,000 supported the industry above ground; many of these workers commuted in from surrounding towns, including Carthage, Missouri, by trolley, which is why the workforce total exceeds Picher's own population figures. More than half of the lead and zinc used by the U.S. during World War I reportedly came from the district: a uniquely American boomtown story that would later curdle into one of the country's longest-running environmental liabilities.

When toxic waste became a playground

For many years, the people of Picher did not know that the "chat" piles which towered in their midst, some claimed to be as tall as 200 feet, could harm their health. They would have picnics on them, kids would ride their bikes down them, and sled on them. Some even used the gravel-like waste to line their driveways and sandbox areas. They were all just another part of the landscape, until they stopped being one.

According to the September 2008 Public Health Assessment report for the Tar Creek site, jointly prepared by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) and the Oklahoma State Department of Health, officials documented elevated blood lead levels among children in the area, alongside contaminated soil, water, and air. The earlier health consultations carried out by ATSDR in the 1990s, using Indian Health Service blood testing, revealed very high levels of lead in the blood of children and teens in the region.

The slow-motion collapse nobody could stop in time

Mining had stopped by the late 1960s, and after the mining companies stopped pumping out the water from the mines, the soil became very unstable and filled with sinkholes and mine collapses. By the late 1970s, the Tar Creek water had become orange and red due to acid mine drainage. The EPA added the site to the Superfund National Priority List in 1983, but the progress was extremely slow because neither federal nor state authorities began serious relocation efforts until the early 2000s.

On May 10, 2008, an EF4 tornado tore through Picher, killing six people and destroying roughly 150 homes. The disaster forced an immediate emergency evacuation, compounding, rather than merely accelerating, a relocation process already underway. The city's incorporated status was officially canceled on September 1, 2009, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society. By the 2010 census, only 20 people remained within the former city limits.

Why this should matter

This is a story about who gets protected from the adverse effects of industrialization and who is is left alone to face them. According to a peer-reviewed study published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' Environmental Health Perspectives, the scientists have found that during the past forty years of studying, there was no such thing as a safe blood level in children, which means that any low-level lead exposure in the under-remediated areas of the US is risky. That finding is about lead exposure broadly, not specific to Tar Creek, but it underscores why any residual contamination in under-remediated sites carries risk.

As a new mining push gets underway in the U.S. for lithium, cobalt, and rare earth minerals needed for clean energy, materials that carry their own distinct environmental and chemical risks, different from lead and zinc, Picher's history can still serve as a reminder that industrial booms carry costs, and that those costs have often landed on the communities living closest to the extraction. Ottawa County has borne that cost since the day the first plow turned up ore on that farmland.