POISONED PICHER - Everything That Remains

Once a booming mining town, Picher was long in decline after mining ceased, before being slowly poisoned in a decades-long environmental catastrophe. It was designated as an EPA superfund site in 1983 with the goal of remediating the town’s toxicity, but in the 1990s they deemed the entire town uninhabitable, and began buying the residents out of their land. If Picher had not been dealt enough blows already, the town was struck by an EF4 Tornado in 2008, killing 6, injuring 150, and flattening much of the largely abandoned cityscape. I was curious, after such a wild journey, to see what remained of Picher. This is what I found.

SOURCES | FURTHER READING

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,...
https://panethos.wordpress.com/2023/0...
https://careygillam.com/articles/arti...
https://www.okhistory.org/publication...
Great article on Picher: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investig...
EPA Superfund Presentation: https://web.archive.org/web/201809122...
Research paper on poisoning: https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...
https://picryl.com/topics/picher

News Report on Picher Residents:    • Picher, Who's left?  
News Report on Picher Poisoning, EPA work:    • Tar Creek - Beneath It All, Part 1 (Lead P...  
Video on the tornado:    • Deadly Tornado hits Pitcher, Oklahoma  
Oklahoma News Report on Picher:    • OETA Story on Picher: The Way We Were aire...  

TOPICS COVERED

Abandoned, Abandoned Places, Abandoned America, Picher, Picher OK, Abandoned Oklahoma, EPA, Environmental Catastrophe, Lead Poisoning, Oklahoma, Toxic Waste, Pollution, Tornado