A few weeks ago we took the back roads part of the way to Missouri. We were looking for a ghost town and it took a few turnarounds to locate it. We stopped at the Kansas/Oklahoma border and took this picture at one of our wrong turns.
There are several small towns close to the border but there was no longer any signs posted about where to turn for the ghost town. This was a good wrong turn. I was glad to find this marker and to take a picture of it. (One branch of my family is Wyandotte. Spelled Wyandot on this marker. On a previous trip we drove through Wyandotte OK and stopped at the Wyandotte Indian Cemetery.) We had to plug in the GPS and enter the name of the ghost town to get directions to find it.
Picher Oklahoma
As you can see not much is left of the town of Picher. It is one of the USA's largest superfund cleanup sites. The trailings (chat piles) left over from the lead and zinc mining ruined the soil and ground water in the whole area. Despite the government spending all of that money to clean the area up it was still not a healthy place to live. The mining also left even the very ground that the homes and school was built on unstable. The people that called this town home did not want to leave. This was their home. This is where their family was from. They didn't want to sell their land and homes to the government and move. Then in 2008 there was a tornado that hit this small town. It killed 8 people, hurt about 150 and damaged so much of what was left. That proved to be too much and most of the people finally left. The 2010 census showed only 20 people now live in this town. The school has been boarded up. Older homes and the old church show damage that looks like it could have come from the tornado. There is a small neighborhood of the newer brick homes that have been emptied out and are just shells. There are empty lots all over town and some slabs still have traces of the floor tiles from where somebody's home was. The historical marker stated that the mining started in 1905. That is 2 years before Oklahoma was a state. It was still Indian Territory until 1907 and the land was owned by the Quapaw tribe. Very few of the real land owners received royalties from the mining.
The marker also mentioned that the Indians became rich from the mining.
Here are a few pictures of the wealth mentioned in the historical marker.
The stupidity of this is overwhelming. To so abuse the ground... that it poisons the children is shocking. I don't know enough of the story to correctly lame blame. I can't imagine that the families, that were uprooted from their homes and moved to Indian Territory, would have made this choice if they knew they would contaminate 34 percent of all children living in the area with lead poisoning. Take a moment and look up each of the tribes mentioned on the marker in Wikipedia. They were all from the great lakes area. Forced out for one reason or another. Moved further and further west until they were "given" land in Indian Territory. It is a sad history.
Wikipedia states that over 20 billion worth of ore was taken from this area in a 30 year period.
20 billion....billion with a B
Somebody got very wealthy.
I don't believe that the wealth stayed in this town.
I think it went into pockets that walked off long before this town died.
I think it is heartbreaking to think of the upheaval this caused those families. You are right. Someone got rich, on the backs of those people who lived, loved, worshiped and existed there. Very sad. I wonder if they lose any sleep over what they caused? Doubtful. They raped the land, and walked away. Mother nature finished the work and left no reason to re-build or keep fighting.
ReplyDeleteIt all reminds me that there is always someone somewhere (probably nearby) who has it worse than I do.
As usual, nice pictures. Haunting. I especially like the church building. Sad to me to see a church building with no Church.
Signed,
Your biggest (probably literally) fan.
This is Meredith. We have a book called Weird Oklahoma and the story of Picher, OK is in it. That's actually how I first found out about it. I've been itching to take a lil road trip there before they tear down all the old buildings and houses. I really enjoyed seeing your shots of the town. Thanks! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Lisa for always being my fan. I love having you cheering for me. :) I have several more of the Church. I wanted to go inside but felt like I would be trespassing.
ReplyDeleteMeredith, I didn't get to spend near enough time there. Most of the town is gone but there are all types of photos that I would like to have taken if I had time to get out and walk around more. Take your GPS it can be tricky to find what is left of the town. We never did see a sign saying anything about where to turn.