When your birthplace is designated a superfund site, you truly can’t go home again.
If you ask my father where he comes from, he would say Joplin, Missouri. He lived there from a relatively young age, graduating from Joplin High School. Sometime after he graduated, my grandparents moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I remember visiting them there for many years. But after my grandfather retired, he and my grandmother moved back to Joplin, a place I associate with more recent memories of them.
My father was not born in Joplin, however. He was born in Picher, Oklahoma, in 1937. My grandparents had married in Picher, and they resided there in their early years of marriage. Picher, a mining town incorporated in 1918, did not end up being the family’s permanent home. Had they chosen to stay, the health of my grandparents as well as my father’s could have been severely compromised.
My grandfather had grown up in Joplin, and my grandmother and her family called Pittsburg, Kansas—another mining community thirty miles away–home. I don’t think the town of Picher held any particular significance for my grandparents, although the newspaper announcement of their marriage (below) seems to suggest that the couple had friends in that community.
January 1, 1937
Picher was one of a handful of small mining communities that sprang up beginning in the 1850s and 1860s in northeastern Oklahoma, southeastern Kansas, and southwestern Missouri when the land was found to have valuable mineral deposits of lead and zinc. In the 1920’s, Picher peaked as a booming mining hub, supplying over half the lead and zinc used in World War I and reaching a population of over 14,000 (with some estimates near 20,000).
Three images of Picher, Oklahoma, taken by Arthur Rothstein, in May 1936. Rothstein documented images of America during the depression as part of the Works Progress Administration. I have previously written two essays about Rothstein and how he came to photograph my maternal grandfather who was also employed through the WPA as part of the Farm Security Administration. L-R: Zinc-miner’s home. Picher, Oklahoma. (Notice the similarity of this house to that of my grandparents in each of their photos at top); Zinc smelter worker. Picher, Oklahoma; and Zinc mine. Picher, Oklahoma. May 1936. Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
By about 1947, the ore industry was in decline, and twenty years after that, the mines were completely depleted of zinc and lead. The mining companies left, but left in their wake were huge mountains of toxic waste.
One hundred seventy-million tons of toxic waste, to be exact.
Tailings—the name of the waste extracted along with the minerals themselves—is also known as “chat.” My father remembers playing on chat piles. At the time, no one knew that these piles were toxic. Author Erin Kelly mentions that families routinely had picnics atop the chat piles. Teens rode bikes up and down the steep hills, and children even put the chat in their sandboxes.
Below are photos of the chat piles that still stand in Picher to this day. I took these photos on a visit my husband and I made to the area in 2021.
Once the mines were abandoned, water was allowed to pool in the mineshafts and underwater network of tunnels. The water mixed with the tailings, making a toxic brew that leached into the local water supply, over time contaminating it with high levels of lead and eventually even turning the water red.
Besides these devastating environmental consequences, the abandoned mines themselves posed real danger to Picher’s inhabitants. Walking anywhere near the old mining areas became hazardous: the ground underfoot was unstable and could collapse without warning. Sinkholes also opened up, creating huge craters in the land.
“Tires float with other junk in a pond formed by a collapsed mine outside Picher. Before the ground at this spot collapsed into the cavern below, leaving a 250-foot wide hole, there were three mine shafts visible at the surface, each with a five-by-seven-foot opening. The threat of more such collapses eventually prompted the government to offer buyouts to Picher residents.” ©John Brecher / NBC News, 2014.
By 1983, the situation had prompted the EPA to designate the area a federal superfund site. Health studies in the 1990s showed roughly one in three children in Picher had dangerously elevated blood lead levels. In 2006, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report warned that underground tunnels made most of the city vulnerable to collapse, prompting federal buyout and evacuation plans.
Adding insult to injury, a violent EF4 tornado tore through Picher in 2008, killing six people and destroying much of the remaining town. By 2010, the population of Picher totaled 20. In 2014, the number of residents had dwindled to 10. The town’s last remaining business closed in 2015 when Gary Linderman, the pharmacist known as the “last man standing,” died.
There have been numerous films about the sad fate of Picher. I can personally recommend The Creek Runs Red. Also available are the following documentaries that I have not seen: Picher: Oklahoma’s Toxic Ghost Town, America’s Most Toxic Town: The Rise and Fall of Picher, Oklahoma, and The Dangerous Situation in Picher Oklahoma.
I remember being shocked and saddened to find out that the place where my father had been born had been declared uninhabitable. Although thinking about my father’s birthplace basically disappearing and later seeing that eerie ghost town for myself were depressing, since visiting there I have thought about so many others in history and the present day who literally “can’t go home again.”
I thought about those whose entire country had/has been taken over by a foreign entity or those who were/are not allowed re-entry into their country for political reasons.
I also thought about those whose homes have been destroyed because of bombings and how entire cities have been wiped off the map because of warfare. With my husband’s involvement in coordinating labor, material, and federal funding for humanitarian de-mining efforts, I am also acutely aware of how dangerous it can be when one’s home contains unexploded ordnance in the form of anti-personnel or anti-tank mines planted in wartime.
Presently at the forefront of my mind are those many people in Spokane, where I formerly lived, who have recently lost their homes to fire. And I’m thinking of those whose homes have been decimated due to other natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, or floods, the latter about which we are currently receiving terrible news from Nepal and Tibet.
Lack of good judgement and irresponsible environmental caretaking are clearly to blame for what transpired in Picher. The blame for habitats being rendered too dangerous for habitation due to damaged infrastructure or unexploded mines also lies at the feet of humans.
While at one time damage inflicted by natural fire, flood, tornado, or hurricane could reasonably be explained as a random natural event—even classified as an “act of God” in legalese—it has become clear that humans have played and continue to play a huge role in and bear direct responsibility for these natural events previously determined out of our control. The sizable increase in the number, severity, and intensity of these natural events can be directly attributed to global warming. As humans, we are in fact culpable for these devastating weather-related events that we have heretofore dismissed as incidents out of our immediate control.
On a more positive note, rehabilitation of Picher and surrounding areas, collectively know as Tar Creek, is being led by Native Americans—a group who has historically put a priority on being responsible caretakers of “Mother Earth.” Members of the Quapaw nation, who were initially allotted this land in a government settlement (and whom at least some opportunists scammed once the mineral deposits were discovered), have taken on the gigantic task of rehabilitation. While no one thinks that human habitation of the lands will ever be possible again, the efforts to fill and cap off the mineshafts and to plant native wildflowers and grasses over the area could at least restore the land to wildlife or even livestock at some point.
The prompt below asked me to consider how a specific location “helped shape those [ancestors] who lived there.” I am so thankful that my grandparents and my father did not live in Picher very long, thus preventing the town from shaping their lives. Had they remained, Picher could have shaped their health, their quality of life, or even their lifespan. My grandfather died of illness at the age of 73, but my grandmother lived to just a month shy of her 90th birthday! And my father, alive and in fantastic health, turned 89 in June!
Written for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge: Week 35-“A Spot on the Map.” PROMPT: “Knowing an ancestor’s location does more than let us find more records. It can give insight into the life of that ancestor. This week, consider a place that has special meaning for your family. Whether it’s a big city, small town, or out in the middle of nowhere, consider how that location helped shape those who lived there.“
Susan, I remember that tornado. My firm had a large presence in Joplin and surrounding communities. Our internal communication posted updates for over a year on the progress of recovery. It was heart breaking. I looked up the town of Picher on Google Maps. Seeing it from above really drives home how the town sits in the middle of dozens of chat piles. Like a mini Chernobyl. – D. Shaw