You should do a show about Centralia, Pennsylvania. It has a similar story, with the exception that there is a wildfire that burns underground - many years after the fires started.
This is my home town. I’m 68 years old. I lived, graduated high school (Go Gorillas), married, raised 2 of the best kids ever, and worked at the high school until they closed it down. The people who lived there were a united community, and we still are. There is a Christmas parade still, we have Picher reunions and our hearts are forever there. The teachers, principals and other staff that were from surrounding towns became part of us. Once you were embarrassed by and embarrassed our children and people of my town you were part of us. I will never regret being from Picher. It was a great life. My heart aches when I dwell on the past and the great memories I have growing up there. To all the Picher people, those who lived and worked there my prayers are with you. Love to you and I hope you are doing well. Once a Gorilla always a Gorilla! Picher, Oklahoma 74360 and Cardin, Oklahoma 74335, gone but not forgotten!
That was beautifully said. Sad truth is, that Picher is only one of many towns and communities throughout the US that has suffered from those who only want profit. God bless you and yours.
Got family in Commerce and had family in Miami, growing up in the Wichita Kansas area any time we went to Miami we drove through and I always remember it kinda being "dead" and that was even before 2009
I'm from central OK and visited earlier this year while camping at Grand Lake. The woman at the gift shop near the campsite grew up there and she had the best stories. I sat in the shop listening to her for a good while because I was so reeled into her stories; her father commuted miners from Joplin to Picher in the tunnels. The memorial is a lovely visit, and I can't recommend Dallas' Dairyette in nearby Quapaw enough. The town's gone but the people are the warmest folks I've ever met, and might EVER meet in my life.
I live in a town near by called Commerce Oklahoma.. I'm originally from Texas, but have lived here 6 years now .. I'll never forget the first time I saw those mountains of chat and heard the story... I know several ppl from Picher and I can't imagine having your hometown just being gone like that... But something no one seems to talk about is the power of wind and water.... The elementary school in our town just tore up 2 ft of ground, we assume because lead was found... I know for a fact for a long time ppl used those chat piles to to fill everything from yards, and driveways to freaking sand boxes ... My child tested above normal lead level when he was about 2 years old ... Idk how far I'd have to go to actually get away from the risk, but it's much further than Picher itself.... Tar creek has all kindsa warnings telling ppl not to swim or fish there, but that creek runs into Grand Lake about an hour away and it's a huge tourist area.... They need to do something with those mountains of poison but idk what can be done... I wish ol boy would've talked about how the government took that land from the Quapaw tribe by basically deeming their leaders incompetent, but they gave it back once they ruined it!
anyone who grew up within a 50 mile radius of picher knows of the history of the town an how the Quapaw Tribe an their dependents were screwed over an are still yet getting screwed over by the company's who did the mining . the towns in an around Picher have high lead in the ground an runoff from water in the mines has killed Tar creek . some of my friends i went to school with in bluejacket had family that worked in the mines . great video thanks for bringing this up many of you should look up Tar creek superfund sight it will make you very mad
My great-grandfather worked in the Picher mines. He and his children (my grandmother being his oldest) moved around a bit in that region, sometimes living in Treece, Kansas, another mining ghost town that's been completely leveled, leaving only foundations, overgrown streets, and chat piles. Nobody talks much about the scourge of strip pit mining that started after the underground zinc mining was halted. Big Brutus, one of the largest steam shovels ever built, still stands in a field outside a different mining town in Kansas (West Mineral). I have to assume much of the zinc and lead mined there went to the Kansas Army Ammunition Plant outside Parsons, where I lived until 8th grade. The area around Picher was once reservarion territory until we, as was our way, decided to take it back once it proved valuable (much like the oil fields, but presumably with less murder). The tribes have since reclaimed thr land and are working to restore it.
Heartbreakingly, Picher may also be the final resting place of two teenage girls. The parents of one of the girls were found shot to death in a burning house, and the bodies of the two girls were never found. It's widely believed that they ended up in a pit or mineshaft in Picher, and due to the dangerous nature of the place, it's likely they'll never be found. Unfortunately the man who was believed to have tortured and killed them served only a small portion of his prison sentence.
The Bible and Freeman case is just horrific. Lauria's mom is trying to pass a law to make sure that murderers have to serve a certain amount of their sentence and can't use good behavior to shorten it.
This is a very personal story for me because I have been to Picher and knew people there. I volunteered at their church in the summer of 2004. Even then we knew the town was dying, but the sense of community was overwhelming and the people that chose to be there loved their town. One of the businesses in town was Susie's Thrift Shop. Susie was a wonderful person that was very active at her church, and I think was raising her granddaughter. I think about Susie and the town of Picher often. Yes there are political lessons to be learned here, but don't forget these are real people leading real lives, and while many will just think of Picher as a toxic place long forgotten, remember that many people called this place home and care about it just as much as you care about your home.
And that somehow makes it okay that pretty much everyone who mined there, and a lot of their family members got sick or died from inhaling lead/heavy metal dust and generations of kids were mentally retarded there because they were poisoned by lead/heavy metals before and after they were born?
As someone who grew up and still lives in Oklahoma I would like to let everyone know that we still talk about this town. It’s taught in our history class. Also, it’s brought up when people are talking about fracking. We use it as a cautionary tale about how poor choices can destroy our state and planet.
Events like this make it mind boggling that some powerful people in the US desperately want to get rid of the EPA. It costs the government a ridiculous amount of money to deal with the aftermath of things like this, yet there are politicians who don't care because they'll get rich off of bribes from the very businesses whose greed causes such destruction.
My father worked for National Zinc in Bartlesville, OK when I was a kid. It’s also a superfund site. They processed the zinc and lead via electrolysis on to copper plates. My dad always washed his clothes separately from ours. I can’t imagine how many children were exposed all around NE Oklahoma. These processing facilities were everywhere.
I worked with a guy who lived on the west side at the time and his property lot was condemned. It’s still terrible over there, no businesses, livable homes, really anything other than some industrial buildings and a cigarette stand on the old highway. But hey they are gonna put a lithium battery recycling plant out that way sort of. It’ll be a little north in the industrial part but there will be a few more dollars and maybe entry level workers will move into and remodel oak park or Jane Phillips, hopefully both.
In 1977 my family moved to Afton, Ok (about 25 miles south of Picher) and we lived there for a year. The water tasted foul and I would not drink it even if made into Kool Aid. I remember driving with my Dad and we stopped for gas and he said I could play on the chat piles ( up near the Picher area). My Aunt lived in Commerce even closer to Picher. Thanks for sharing Simon.
@@Aliyah_666 Agreed, unfortunately once people realize that means a different standard of living and a new normal, they stop caring, or at least try not to think about it rather than make real changes.
Yep to all of this. Legit right before I started this vid I was reading a news article from the Outer Bank in North Carolina. Over the past 4 years the ocean has claimed 9 houses. Two came down within 24 hours of each other this week. People were giving one couple crap about buying an ocean front home. They explained when they bought it the ocean was an entire football field away. (I don't remember exactly how long ago it was they bought it but it runs in my mind that it was 20-30 years ago. AND there are at least three more houses that may not make it. NGL, I cant even comprehend having enough money to purchase something like that, but I still feel terrible for the people. (Well, for the ones who had hoped to retire there one day yadda yadda. Ya know, the people who have emotional attachments to the place.) It's been so bad for so long. And to think there are people who still deny it.
If you're looking for a similar topic, Simon & co., might I suggest Times Beach, Missouri? Not so much a story of negligence as it is incompetence, and it's only a short two and a half to 3-hour drive from Picher
You should check out the band Chat Pile. I'm in OKC, and they're a local grunge/metal band named after the chat piles of Picher, OK. "Why?" is a great place to start.
I'M SO GLAD YOU FINALLY COVERED THIS!!!! A long time ago I asked you to cover this tragedy in the comments!!!! What you didn't mention was that a known climate denier was on the budget committee for the EPA; Senator Imhoff (I like to call him "Senator Imhuffingglue). The accusation is that even though Picher was in his home state that he was supposed to represent, he screwed over families in that buyout by sending people he KNEW would under value the properties involved. Eventually the government paid for the sinkholes, but not the lead. Imhoff kept categorically denying the hazard. Some of these families lost priceless family heirlooms or had to leave behind family homes built by hand and inhabited for MULTIPLE generations. They weren't given anywhere near enough money to start again and many of them now had disabled children in desperate need of behavioral health care.
@@ryansauchuk7290 He basically IGNORED extreme North East Oklahoma. The entire population of Miami, Picher, Quapaw, Wyandotte, Fairland, Commerce, Peoria, North Miami, Cardin, Afton, Narcissa, Dotyville, Grove, Jay, Bernice, Colcord, Kansas, Oaks, West Siloam Springs, Brush Creek, Bull Hollow, Butler, Cayuga, Cleora, Cloud Creek, Copeland, Deer Lick, Dennis, Dodge, Dripping Springs, Drowning Creek, Flint Creek, Indianola, Kenwood, Leach, New Eucha, Oak Hill-Piney, Old Eucha, Rocky Ford, Sycamore, Tagg Flats, Twin Oaks, White Water, Zena, Chloeta, Eucha, Pryor Creek, Adair, Chouteau, Disney, Grand Lake Towne, Hoot Owl, Langley, Locust Grove, Pensacola, Salina, Spavinaw, Sportsmen Acres, Strang, Ballou, Cedar Crest, Iron Post, Kenwood, Little Rock, Mazie, Murphy, Pin Oak Acres, Pump Back, Rose, Sams Corner, Snake Creek, Sportmans Shores, Sportsmen Acres Community, and Wickliffe COMBINED amounts to less than 120,000 people (that's Ottawa, Mays, Craig, and Delaware counties). That's barely the population of Broken Arrow, much less Tulsa or Oklahoma city, so why should he even care? Besides, people here have voted Republican for GENERATIONS because the Democrats can't be bothered to even show up, much less try to actually, you know, REPRESENT. I mean, yeah, ok, sure, they could have voted for someone else, but WHO CARES?! The Republicans don't, but they at least kinda pay lip service. The Democrats can't even be bothered to do that! The Democrats don't understand why people in rural areas vote Republican. It's because the Democrats DON'T EVEN SHOW UP! Heck, when McCaskill was Senator for Missouri for 12 years, she visited Southwest Missouri 3 times (I think???). Josh Hawley (whom I despise) has visited that many times in just 6 years. (Just to be clear, I live in Joplin Mo, but I have family and friends in Quapaw, which is like 45 minutes from me.) So yeah, sure, tell us we just have to vote for someone else. Like it actually MATTERS when you live in BFE.
@@itsoundzgood insufferable! a whole book gaslighting people about climate change. and we're supposed to trust him with science because he's a senator? fuck no.
I moved to nearby Miami in 2007. I remember sitting on our back porch watching that tornado in the distance, i had friends that lived in picher. I've driven through that area on a few occasions since the town was fully abandoned and it is a spooky place to be.
@@patrickaycock3655Miami, Oklahoma. You could have just looked it up yourself. Would have taken less than 5 seconds more than likely. You know more than one place can have the same name, right? The embarrassment of watching arrogance and ignorance meet.
@@crampusmaximus8849 lmao you forgot that television exists so its quite possible for them to watch a tornado in OK while in florida. And how childish you must look coming in here as a keyboard warrior with a condescending attitude. You made an assumption that i was unaware that more than one place can share a name. Tell you what come out to egypt and say that stuff to my face. Ill let you google it.
@@patrickaycock3655 No, this is Miami (My-Am-Uh) Oklahoma just a few miles down the road from Picher OK. It's also quite common to watch tornadoes from one's porch in Oklahoma.
Concerningly, Picher sounds scarily similar to my Missouri hometown of Granby until very recently. Luckily, Granby has turned itself around and actually cleaned up significantly (hell, for a southwest Missouri town of barely over 2000, it's actually kinda vibrant), but when my parents were kids, the town shared a lot of concerning features of Picher. My dad actually remembered playing on the chat piles as a kid. Again, thankfully they took cleanup processes very seriously and began work de-leading everything in the 90s, but still. Thete are mineshafts *everywhere* if you know where to look, and my grandparent's house actually has a very close-to-the-surface mineshaft in their side-yard thats shockingly not filled in yet thanks to an old bedframe after it was uncovered sometime in the past seven years or so.
I ran a track meet in Pitcher Oklahoma when I was in the 7th grade! You can see the field at 11:57 in the video. The chat piles around town were huge. The town was abandoned only a few years afterwards.
Your research team missed the part about the Quapaw Tribe not wanting their land mined & government taking "stewardship" of the land for members of the tribe who had been committed "for their own good." That is how the mining started.
When enough money is to be made there is no limits to what will be done. Greed is just too tempting, too addictive. Only nature itself can and will end it. It will balance out somehow given enough time. Life will heal. I think those people you speak of that was robbed of their homes and lives would have liked that. Somehow wouldn't be surprised if they already knew..
@@jejbsh2191 ...and yet it was the private corporations and government that absolutely f'd up the land for all future generations. Also "that's how the world works"? Really? C'mon. We can recognise that, yes, that's how things have tended to be without just fatalistically shrugging and accepting that it has to be that way.
My grandpa was born and grew up in Picher. I live only like 10 minutes away from Picher. Very weird to see Whistle boy cover a town I'm so familiar with and have been to so many times in my life
Tell me why a lot of *accidental* spills and contaminations can't be cleaned up? Oh, that's right. *regulations*. Why, even when regulations is there still so much pollution in the air and water nothing we do will make any impact to clean it up, even in THREE lifetimes? Businesses are already regulated to death and the economy reflects that. You want your groceries to cost even more?
@mattseman5682 , as Montanan, that is factually incorrect. Butte and anaconda have been part of a superfund site since the 1980's. Not to mention the treatment plant, funded and built by the EPA. The Montanan constitution guarantees a clean environment, and sure as shit we take that seriously. Theres a reason the Tintina mine is hotly debated and protested by pretty much everyone outside of WSS
I'm shocked I didn't come across this when I fell into a Centralia, PA rabbit hole. I found Lake Peigneur (an oil rig on a freshwater lake drilled into an active salt mine with people inside, slapstick ensues) but never Picher
The good news about tornadoes, the energy that creates them is warm, humid air putting moisture into the atmosphere, and subsequently raining the dust right back down out of the air.
When you spoke about residents who did not want to leave their hometown I immediately thought of a mining town in Australia called Wittenoom. There it was asbestos that poisened not only the town but wider surroundings (altogether around 120,000 acres). The last inhabitant moved away 2019 and after that its name was removed from road signs and maps.
I used to play peewee football there in the early 2000s just before the town was shut down pretty much. I even remember when the town was removed from the schedule because it was no longer a town. Every time i left i usually felt really sick for a few days. Always hated playing there
I have family in the tristate area, and I've driven through the Picher/Cardin area several times over the past 25 years. It really does look like a post-apocalyptic landscape. It looked like that even before the tornado. The Quapaw tribe is stuck with this mess.
God, imagine having all that shit happen to you, the lead poisoning and the increased risks of cancer; then, when you think it just can't get any worse, a Tornado rocks up!
@IntotheShadows, you should do a story about Centralia, Pennsylvania. It has a similar story as this one, except that there is a wildfireburning underground of the town - decades after the fire first started.
I remember growing up in the late 80s and all throughout the 90s when I go down to Oklahoma for 4th of July or just to be with family members down there we went through picher several times and that was the only place we were not ever allowed to get out of the car when my family would go through. It is truly sad what happened to that town
Lived near pitcher, had friends in high school who had to transfer to our school when pitchers closed down, tar creek cut through my town. What happened was awful and preventable.
I live in Flint and we had 1000s of kids who tested positive for lead because our city council decided to use the Flint River as a drinking source. The same river that GM had their production plants on. The company had dumped their excess waste into the river for years in the early 20th century. This could be a topic for this channel maybe?? Sadly today you can see the kids in school and many struggle. And our school system just isn't equipped for these kids today and the extra attention they needed. And entire generation of kids with mental delays and various other problems associated with lead poisoning.
I believe it was on this channel where they covered flint. Somewhere in the last year. I remember watching it. Either here or Today I found Out channel.
My family is from this area and I've been in and out of here my whole life and I've never, ever heard of this! My parents live in Grove now. This explains a lot. Wow. Thanks, Whistleboy!
Simon is EXCELLENT at explaining history and I enjoy listening to him when he does what he did in this video. Love it. Recently I have seen Simon do comedy and it is the complete opposite of the fine job he does here
Speaking of Oklahoma, I think a couple of good episodes would be Moore’s EF5 history and the El Reno beast of a tornado that took the lives of my friends.
I grew up in SW MO in another lead/zinc mining town. We also had big chat piles around town which a lot of kids I knew played in/on, but I was never allowed to go there. I didn't realize what they were when I was little, they just seemed like gravel, and I was annoyed that my parents wouldn't let me play with the other kids. But once I understood, I was grateful and also stunned that my friends' parents allowed them to play there. I remember when Picher was evacuated seeing an elderly lady on the news crying. She said she didn't know anywhere else and didn't want to leave. I felt so sorry for her.
Lol, I just had to go there today. This coming up in my algorithm is absolutely weird.....I had to meet the Quapaw tribe and go through the Chat fields, too.
For those who care and don't want to just talk about how bad companies are. I grew up just north of pitcher. By the time people knew how bad the contamination was a lot of the companies that were at fault no longer existed. There was a class actuon lawsuit against the companies that were still atound. By the time the tornado hit pitcher it was already mostly empty of residents. We all played on the chat piles for years and my hometown used to buy chat from there for our roads. Simon's writers do a good job of research but that is not the entire story. And finally pitcher is not a "eerie" place as people say. Its just like every small town in that part of the country, everyone left.
@NotimeforThis-fd4ye yes the companies were at fault. The lawsuit agreed to that as well. But all of this happened in a time before anyone knew the actual risks. It doesn't excuse what happened but it's also not just evil companies. There was a lot more to it.
I have lived in Oklahoma my entire life and THIS is the very first time I have ever heard about this event or town. I'm stunned by the facts and I can't understand how it is possible that I never even knew.
Because nobody here talks about it. It's not exactly one of our proud moments in history... imagine if they put it in the song "🎶 Oklahoma where the town gets radioactive and everyone has to leave. 🎶" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
I don't have any idea how you haven't heard of it either. I graduated Locust Grove High School in 1994 and learned about it in school. Tulsa news on 6 has done a 100 stories on it. It has been in the Tulsa World news paper 100s of times. When the 2014 tornado hit Pitcher it was covered by every state wide news agency, about possible after effects, and reassured by the Corps of Engineers, and EPA as being a none issue. Perhaps you live hundreds of miles away in Altus, or Boise City and just don't pay attention to things in Green Country???
My great grandfather was a miner in Picher who died of tuberculosis. I had a lot of family who lived in Picher who lived to old age. I live 15 minutes from Picher and have always been fascinated by it.
There was also a significant amount of arson which strained emergency services as well. Probably been 15 years since I last visited, but it was eerie seeing houses left with unopened mail left on the counter, plates on the tables, clothes in the closets, etc.. Very much like they just randomly up and decided to leave one evening.
Been there several times for work, and first time was getting lost on the way back from Missouri. On one of the work jobs we weren't allowed to disturb the soil at all and we found 8 dead cows all together. Will never forget that, or seeing the tailing piles driving in every day. Some had been there so long they had their own erosion features, which was fascinating.
I grew up playing baseball here as a kid in the 90s. I was always afraid I’d fall through the ground at anytime because of the rumors people had fallen into sink holes that were riding atvs on and around the mounds.
Does anyone else find that open door in the background, distracting, somehow sinister. I've seen enough horror movies to know this frame of image is a foreshadowing of something horrible about to happen. :)
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My wife's grandfather was Albert Brewer, once the manger of the local bank. She spent many summers with her grandparents. After we were married we visited her grandparents there until finally both her grandparents passed away. I have many fond memories made there.
My mom's entire family is from this area. I visited family there in 1976 and my best memory is of the signs everywhere warning of cave in all around established residential areas. I also recall my cousins calling the chat piles " mountains". I grew up in California. My definition of what a " mountain" was very different from their's!!
Simon I just want you to know that I am trying magic spoon for the 1st time Because I saw it On the shelf department store and I remembered how good you said it was. It's definitely every bit as good as you said it was. It's more expensive than normal cereal but I'm diabetic so I'm not supposed to have normal cereal. Now cereal can be back on the menu for me every now and then. (On a side note I'm using unsweetened almond milk to minimize the carb content even more)
I first heard of Picher as part of a documentary series the Discovery Channel put out on dangerous weather and natural phenomenon years ago, as part of the tornado episode. During the program they did say that there were no plans to rebuild the town, but they made it sound as if this was due to the destruction caused by the twister, and considering that Greensburg, KS was also part of the episode, and I already knew that town, despite being hit by an F5 tornado, was then currently in the process of rebuilding, I was always curious as to why the same was not true for Picher. Given how attached to the town some of the interviewees were, it just seemed a little unusual for some reason; there was an overhead shot from a helicopter showing where the tornado cut through town, but it looked like there were still a good number of viable structures. This finally answers all those questions I had about the town, and I realize this is almost 20 years late, but my heart still goes out to these poor people who lost everything not just because of that tornado, but because of somebody else’s greed and total disregard for the impact of their actions. Plains towns have it hard enough as it is-they don’t need that kind of burden.
My husband went to Northeastern A&M in the early 1990s. They used to run and climb the chat piles as training for wrestling, until they told the coach to stop doing that.
Big Brutus is an enormous mining machine located in SE Kansas. It would be a good subject for a video. Amazing that it only operated for about 10 years.
It’s crazy to me that something like this happened so recently. Like, this isn’t a “back in 1801…” this was RECENT from a historical context. It’s crazy to think about.
Some place I have been to. I went there and took a lot of photos in the early 2010’s unfortunately the memory card was lost over time . I went back a few years ago and the chat piles were still there but a lot of what I had the places where I had taken photos had been demolished.
You should do one on "walking" tornadoes bro, shit is truly chilling.... By that I mean seeing it literally made a chill run up my entire body.... It's not a nice thing to look at
I came across a bulldozed town or neighborhood back in high school. I could never find any information about it, though. Entire buildings full of people's family photos and stuff were just flattened and nature was slowly reclaiming the materials.
I live very close to a sugar plant (sugar beets) and they have the piles of processed waste stacked up in a little white mountain in the open air... supposedly its far enough away but it gets stupid windy here and you can smell the stench from town... why is there so many asthma cases here 🤔
I visited the town in the late 90s. We were actually there to band endangered bank swallows - Picher was the home of the only population of bank swallows in Oklahoma, ironically due to the chat piles the swallows made their homes in. We knew it was contaminated, but I had no idea just *how* contaminated it was at the time. I was just a kid, mind you. I recall eating at some kind of restaurant - I think it was a diner there. The town was already falling apart, but I don't think it had been declared a Superfund site at that time.
Discovered that my paternal grandparents with my dad and his brothers lived in Picher, OK for a number of years during the 1920’s. Gramps was a doctor so not directly involved in the mining.
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You should do a show about Centralia, Pennsylvania. It has a similar story, with the exception that there is a wildfire that burns underground - many years after the fires started.
Thanks Simon. What's wrong with your camera? The image is gradually becoming more noisy and out of focus.
@@rosemariemerritt5035
Just subbed! 😊
@@rosemariemerritt5035 Yes! 😊 And they said it would be burning for another hundred years or more! 😳
Native Oklahoman. I’m glad to see this place covered, and I really appreciate how you handled talking about the tornado and didn’t hype it.
This is my home town. I’m 68 years old. I lived, graduated high school (Go Gorillas), married, raised 2 of the best kids ever, and worked at the high school until they closed it down. The people who lived there were a united community, and we still are. There is a Christmas parade still, we have Picher reunions and our hearts are forever there. The teachers, principals and other staff that were from surrounding towns became part of us. Once you were embarrassed by and embarrassed our children and people of my town you were part of us. I will never regret being from Picher. It was a great life. My heart aches when I dwell on the past and the great memories I have growing up there. To all the Picher people, those who lived and worked there my prayers are with you. Love to you and I hope you are doing well. Once a Gorilla always a Gorilla! Picher, Oklahoma 74360 and Cardin, Oklahoma 74335, gone but not forgotten!
That was beautifully said. Sad truth is, that Picher is only one of many towns and communities throughout the US that has suffered from those who only want profit. God bless you and yours.
Got family in Commerce and had family in Miami, growing up in the Wichita Kansas area any time we went to Miami we drove through and I always remember it kinda being "dead" and that was even before 2009
Hey Debbie! Hope you’re well!
I'm from central OK and visited earlier this year while camping at Grand Lake. The woman at the gift shop near the campsite grew up there and she had the best stories. I sat in the shop listening to her for a good while because I was so reeled into her stories; her father commuted miners from Joplin to Picher in the tunnels. The memorial is a lovely visit, and I can't recommend Dallas' Dairyette in nearby Quapaw enough. The town's gone but the people are the warmest folks I've ever met, and might EVER meet in my life.
I live in a town near by called Commerce Oklahoma.. I'm originally from Texas, but have lived here 6 years now .. I'll never forget the first time I saw those mountains of chat and heard the story... I know several ppl from Picher and I can't imagine having your hometown just being gone like that... But something no one seems to talk about is the power of wind and water.... The elementary school in our town just tore up 2 ft of ground, we assume because lead was found... I know for a fact for a long time ppl used those chat piles to to fill everything from yards, and driveways to freaking sand boxes ... My child tested above normal lead level when he was about 2 years old ... Idk how far I'd have to go to actually get away from the risk, but it's much further than Picher itself.... Tar creek has all kindsa warnings telling ppl not to swim or fish there, but that creek runs into Grand Lake about an hour away and it's a huge tourist area.... They need to do something with those mountains of poison but idk what can be done... I wish ol boy would've talked about how the government took that land from the Quapaw tribe by basically deeming their leaders incompetent, but they gave it back once they ruined it!
anyone who grew up within a 50 mile radius of picher knows of the history of the town an how the Quapaw Tribe an their dependents were screwed over an are still yet getting screwed over by the company's who did the mining . the towns in an around Picher have high lead in the ground an runoff from water in the mines has killed Tar creek . some of my friends i went to school with in bluejacket had family that worked in the mines . great video thanks for bringing this up many of you should look up Tar creek superfund sight it will make you very mad
The video already mentions the superfund siTE.
Lots of family live rural south of Columbus just a few miles north of Picher, they do not drink the well water.
It's a story representative of all too many of these mining communities, I fear.
My great-grandfather worked in the Picher mines. He and his children (my grandmother being his oldest) moved around a bit in that region, sometimes living in Treece, Kansas, another mining ghost town that's been completely leveled, leaving only foundations, overgrown streets, and chat piles. Nobody talks much about the scourge of strip pit mining that started after the underground zinc mining was halted. Big Brutus, one of the largest steam shovels ever built, still stands in a field outside a different mining town in Kansas (West Mineral). I have to assume much of the zinc and lead mined there went to the Kansas Army Ammunition Plant outside Parsons, where I lived until 8th grade. The area around Picher was once reservarion territory until we, as was our way, decided to take it back once it proved valuable (much like the oil fields, but presumably with less murder). The tribes have since reclaimed thr land and are working to restore it.
Heartbreakingly, Picher may also be the final resting place of two teenage girls. The parents of one of the girls were found shot to death in a burning house, and the bodies of the two girls were never found. It's widely believed that they ended up in a pit or mineshaft in Picher, and due to the dangerous nature of the place, it's likely they'll never be found. Unfortunately the man who was believed to have tortured and killed them served only a small portion of his prison sentence.
Perhaps we could get a Casual Criminalist on this?
The Bible and Freeman case is just horrific. Lauria's mom is trying to pass a law to make sure that murderers have to serve a certain amount of their sentence and can't use good behavior to shorten it.
@@Terron35 I think that's a fantastic idea. My heart goes out to those people for sure.
@@tamarinmangold1414 It would be an interesting case to look into for sure, but definitely a rough one.
What is the perpetrators name?
This is a very personal story for me because I have been to Picher and knew people there. I volunteered at their church in the summer of 2004. Even then we knew the town was dying, but the sense of community was overwhelming and the people that chose to be there loved their town.
One of the businesses in town was Susie's Thrift Shop. Susie was a wonderful person that was very active at her church, and I think was raising her granddaughter.
I think about Susie and the town of Picher often. Yes there are political lessons to be learned here, but don't forget these are real people leading real lives, and while many will just think of Picher as a toxic place long forgotten, remember that many people called this place home and care about it just as much as you care about your home.
And that somehow makes it okay that pretty much everyone who mined there, and a lot of their family members got sick or died from inhaling lead/heavy metal dust and generations of kids were mentally retarded there because they were poisoned by lead/heavy metals before and after they were born?
As someone who grew up and still lives in Oklahoma I would like to let everyone know that we still talk about this town. It’s taught in our history class. Also, it’s brought up when people are talking about fracking. We use it as a cautionary tale about how poor choices can destroy our state and planet.
Events like this make it mind boggling that some powerful people in the US desperately want to get rid of the EPA. It costs the government a ridiculous amount of money to deal with the aftermath of things like this, yet there are politicians who don't care because they'll get rich off of bribes from the very businesses whose greed causes such destruction.
My father worked for National Zinc in Bartlesville, OK when I was a kid. It’s also a superfund site. They processed the zinc and lead via electrolysis on to copper plates. My dad always washed his clothes separately from ours. I can’t imagine how many children were exposed all around NE Oklahoma. These processing facilities were everywhere.
I worked with a guy who lived on the west side at the time and his property lot was condemned. It’s still terrible over there, no businesses, livable homes, really anything other than some industrial buildings and a cigarette stand on the old highway. But hey they are gonna put a lithium battery recycling plant out that way sort of. It’ll be a little north in the industrial part but there will be a few more dollars and maybe entry level workers will move into and remodel oak park or Jane Phillips, hopefully both.
In 1977 my family moved to Afton, Ok (about 25 miles south of Picher) and we lived there for a year. The water tasted foul and I would not drink it even if made into Kool Aid. I remember driving with my Dad and we stopped for gas and he said I could play on the chat piles ( up near the Picher area). My Aunt lived in Commerce even closer to Picher. Thanks for sharing Simon.
Oof that's rough..we gotta care more about our planet...smdh..😡
@@Aliyah_666 Agreed, unfortunately once people realize that means a different standard of living and a new normal, they stop caring, or at least try not to think about it rather than make real changes.
Yep to all of this. Legit right before I started this vid I was reading a news article from the Outer Bank in North Carolina. Over the past 4 years the ocean has claimed 9 houses.
Two came down within 24 hours of each other this week.
People were giving one couple crap about buying an ocean front home. They explained when they bought it the ocean was an entire football field away. (I don't remember exactly how long ago it was they bought it but it runs in my mind that it was 20-30 years ago.
AND there are at least three more houses that may not make it.
NGL, I cant even comprehend having enough money to purchase something like that, but I still feel terrible for the people. (Well, for the ones who had hoped to retire there one day yadda yadda. Ya know, the people who have emotional attachments to the place.)
It's been so bad for so long. And to think there are people who still deny it.
If you're looking for a similar topic, Simon & co., might I suggest Times Beach, Missouri?
Not so much a story of negligence as it is incompetence, and it's only a short two and a half to 3-hour drive from Picher
Yes. Interesting story. I remember passing it on I44 when I moved to Missouri.
The chemical, dioxin, that contaminated New Times Beach was made in Verona, MO, only a 40-minute drive from Picher, OK.
You should check out the band Chat Pile. I'm in OKC, and they're a local grunge/metal band named after the chat piles of Picher, OK. "Why?" is a great place to start.
God's country is pretty great.
@@andrewlegrand4416 I listen to that whole album about once a week. It's so good.
Chat Pile are my new favourite band since I discovered them earlier this year. So keen for Cool World.
@@Nargleberry Hell yeah, sis! You from the OKC area too?
@@ToniAllen Adelaide, South Australia 😅
I'M SO GLAD YOU FINALLY COVERED THIS!!!! A long time ago I asked you to cover this tragedy in the comments!!!! What you didn't mention was that a known climate denier was on the budget committee for the EPA; Senator Imhoff (I like to call him "Senator Imhuffingglue). The accusation is that even though Picher was in his home state that he was supposed to represent, he screwed over families in that buyout by sending people he KNEW would under value the properties involved. Eventually the government paid for the sinkholes, but not the lead. Imhoff kept categorically denying the hazard. Some of these families lost priceless family heirlooms or had to leave behind family homes built by hand and inhabited for MULTIPLE generations. They weren't given anywhere near enough money to start again and many of them now had disabled children in desperate need of behavioral health care.
Imhoff didn't elect himself.
His constitutiants voted him back in so they must have liked his policies
I hated Imhoff. He was horrible. I never voted for him here in OK
@@ryansauchuk7290 He basically IGNORED extreme North East Oklahoma. The entire population of Miami, Picher, Quapaw, Wyandotte, Fairland, Commerce, Peoria, North Miami, Cardin, Afton, Narcissa, Dotyville, Grove, Jay, Bernice, Colcord, Kansas, Oaks, West Siloam Springs, Brush Creek, Bull Hollow, Butler, Cayuga, Cleora, Cloud Creek, Copeland, Deer Lick, Dennis, Dodge, Dripping Springs, Drowning Creek, Flint Creek, Indianola, Kenwood, Leach, New Eucha, Oak Hill-Piney, Old Eucha, Rocky Ford, Sycamore, Tagg Flats, Twin Oaks, White Water, Zena, Chloeta, Eucha, Pryor Creek, Adair, Chouteau, Disney, Grand Lake Towne, Hoot Owl, Langley, Locust Grove, Pensacola, Salina, Spavinaw, Sportsmen Acres, Strang, Ballou, Cedar Crest, Iron Post, Kenwood, Little Rock, Mazie, Murphy, Pin Oak Acres, Pump Back, Rose, Sams Corner, Snake Creek, Sportmans Shores, Sportsmen Acres Community, and Wickliffe COMBINED amounts to less than 120,000 people (that's Ottawa, Mays, Craig, and Delaware counties). That's barely the population of Broken Arrow, much less Tulsa or Oklahoma city, so why should he even care? Besides, people here have voted Republican for GENERATIONS because the Democrats can't be bothered to even show up, much less try to actually, you know, REPRESENT.
I mean, yeah, ok, sure, they could have voted for someone else, but WHO CARES?! The Republicans don't, but they at least kinda pay lip service. The Democrats can't even be bothered to do that!
The Democrats don't understand why people in rural areas vote Republican. It's because the Democrats DON'T EVEN SHOW UP! Heck, when McCaskill was Senator for Missouri for 12 years, she visited Southwest Missouri 3 times (I think???). Josh Hawley (whom I despise) has visited that many times in just 6 years. (Just to be clear, I live in Joplin Mo, but I have family and friends in Quapaw, which is like 45 minutes from me.)
So yeah, sure, tell us we just have to vote for someone else.
Like it actually MATTERS when you live in BFE.
@@itsoundzgood insufferable! a whole book gaslighting people about climate change. and we're supposed to trust him with science because he's a senator? fuck no.
I moved to nearby Miami in 2007. I remember sitting on our back porch watching that tornado in the distance, i had friends that lived in picher. I've driven through that area on a few occasions since the town was fully abandoned and it is a spooky place to be.
I work in langley, oklahoma, drive over there all the time Around the area to do hvac jobs, it is eerie
You watched a tornado in oklahoma.... from your porch... in florida???
@@patrickaycock3655Miami, Oklahoma. You could have just looked it up yourself. Would have taken less than 5 seconds more than likely.
You know more than one place can have the same name, right?
The embarrassment of watching arrogance and ignorance meet.
@@crampusmaximus8849 lmao you forgot that television exists so its quite possible for them to watch a tornado in OK while in florida. And how childish you must look coming in here as a keyboard warrior with a condescending attitude. You made an assumption that i was unaware that more than one place can share a name. Tell you what come out to egypt and say that stuff to my face. Ill let you google it.
@@patrickaycock3655 No, this is Miami (My-Am-Uh) Oklahoma just a few miles down the road from Picher OK. It's also quite common to watch tornadoes from one's porch in Oklahoma.
Concerningly, Picher sounds scarily similar to my Missouri hometown of Granby until very recently. Luckily, Granby has turned itself around and actually cleaned up significantly (hell, for a southwest Missouri town of barely over 2000, it's actually kinda vibrant), but when my parents were kids, the town shared a lot of concerning features of Picher. My dad actually remembered playing on the chat piles as a kid. Again, thankfully they took cleanup processes very seriously and began work de-leading everything in the 90s, but still. Thete are mineshafts *everywhere* if you know where to look, and my grandparent's house actually has a very close-to-the-surface mineshaft in their side-yard thats shockingly not filled in yet thanks to an old bedframe after it was uncovered sometime in the past seven years or so.
I ran a track meet in Pitcher Oklahoma when I was in the 7th grade! You can see the field at 11:57 in the video. The chat piles around town were huge.
The town was abandoned only a few years afterwards.
Your research team missed the part about the Quapaw Tribe not wanting their land mined & government taking "stewardship" of the land for members of the tribe who had been committed "for their own good." That is how the mining started.
America belongs to the White man, sorry… not sorry!
When enough money is to be made there is no limits to what will be done. Greed is just too tempting, too addictive. Only nature itself can and will end it. It will balance out somehow given enough time. Life will heal. I think those people you speak of that was robbed of their homes and lives would have liked that. Somehow wouldn't be surprised if they already knew..
Before it was the Quapaw tribes land it was someone else's that the Quapaw took for their own use that's how the world works
@@jejbsh2191 ...and yet it was the private corporations and government that absolutely f'd up the land for all future generations.
Also "that's how the world works"? Really? C'mon. We can recognise that, yes, that's how things have tended to be without just fatalistically shrugging and accepting that it has to be that way.
Yeah, and once it was no longer useful, they gave it back and pretty much wiped their hands of it.
My grandpa was born and grew up in Picher. I live only like 10 minutes away from Picher.
Very weird to see Whistle boy cover a town I'm so familiar with and have been to so many times in my life
🍪
Looks a right dump
@@bear1245 You be right
It's crazy how much this wasn't in the news. I've lived in oklahoma my entire life and only found out about this last year.
I also grew up near that area. In the 70's the high school football coaches would run the players up and down those chat hills.
Life After People covers this story in chilling perfection: "All that's left is poison that can't be removed... and a land that can't be fixed."
I first heard of Picher when I watched that episode of Life After People. Heavy stuff.
For all the people who say "We don't need regulations. The companies will regulate themselves."
Mining also damaged the area around the town of Butte, Montana. Guess who won't let them clean up any further? The regulations set forth by the EPA.
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Rmbr THAT quote…
Tell me why a lot of *accidental* spills and contaminations can't be cleaned up? Oh, that's right. *regulations*. Why, even when regulations is there still so much pollution in the air and water nothing we do will make any impact to clean it up, even in THREE lifetimes? Businesses are already regulated to death and the economy reflects that. You want your groceries to cost even more?
Sure. But we really don't need the FAA holding up Space X.
@mattseman5682 , as Montanan, that is factually incorrect. Butte and anaconda have been part of a superfund site since the 1980's. Not to mention the treatment plant, funded and built by the EPA. The Montanan constitution guarantees a clean environment, and sure as shit we take that seriously. Theres a reason the Tintina mine is hotly debated and protested by pretty much everyone outside of WSS
Excellent content. I've watched almost all of your videos! Great work, Simon!!!
me to i get excited when the Light reflects of Simons head
ALL his videos? On ALL his channels?
@@patrickaycock3655 YES! I love his content! My favorite channel is the Casual Criminalist!
@@elizaschane4104 *salute*
I'm shocked I didn't come across this when I fell into a Centralia, PA rabbit hole. I found Lake Peigneur (an oil rig on a freshwater lake drilled into an active salt mine with people inside, slapstick ensues) but never Picher
Just imagine all the poisonous dust that tornado scattered.
💯😱😰
The good news about tornadoes, the energy that creates them is warm, humid air putting moisture into the atmosphere, and subsequently raining the dust right back down out of the air.
It being in the water supply is worse
When you spoke about residents who did not want to leave their hometown I immediately thought of a mining town in Australia called Wittenoom. There it was asbestos that poisened not only the town but wider surroundings (altogether around 120,000 acres). The last inhabitant moved away 2019 and after that its name was removed from road signs and maps.
Oklahoma is full of abandoned towns that you probably don't want to be in at night lol I worked at quite a few grows in small abandoned towns
Don’t give up the game online 😝😆😂
I used to play peewee football there in the early 2000s just before the town was shut down pretty much. I even remember when the town was removed from the schedule because it was no longer a town. Every time i left i usually felt really sick for a few days. Always hated playing there
As being someone born and raised in Oklahoma, if there isn't a tornado, then it's not an ordinary spring day. 😊
I was in Picher for the second time slightly over a month ago, it’s only an hour and a half away. Great to see Whistle boy talking about it
I’m so glad you’re talking about this.
Had to do a double take on the location before I started watching because Picher is 30 minutes out from where I live
Would love to see more videos on superfund sites on this channels or one your 50 other ones!
I grew up in the Picher area. My grandmother lived in the area. It’s so odd to see how nature has reclaimed most of the place.
Thanks for the awesome content 😊
Thanks to Simon and his team
I grew up not far from Centralia, Pennsylvania. Sadly similar story there. This was fascinating.
I have family in the tristate area, and I've driven through the Picher/Cardin area several times over the past 25 years.
It really does look like a post-apocalyptic landscape. It looked like that even before the tornado.
The Quapaw tribe is stuck with this mess.
I grew up in Owasso. It's dope to see so many fellow Okies in the comment section.
God, imagine having all that shit happen to you, the lead poisoning and the increased risks of cancer; then, when you think it just can't get any worse, a Tornado rocks up!
Too much lead intake also leads to brain problems like voting republican.
Well that's what happens when you build your town around active mines.
What a tragedy. Myopic and greedy businesses and individuals will always choose short-term gains over health and safety.
@IntotheShadows, you should do a story about Centralia, Pennsylvania. It has a similar story as this one, except that there is a wildfireburning underground of the town - decades after the fire first started.
Pretty sure he has.
I remember growing up in the late 80s and all throughout the 90s when I go down to Oklahoma for 4th of July or just to be with family members down there we went through picher several times and that was the only place we were not ever allowed to get out of the car when my family would go through. It is truly sad what happened to that town
Lived near pitcher, had friends in high school who had to transfer to our school when pitchers closed down, tar creek cut through my town. What happened was awful and preventable.
Sitting here with pitcher down the road 😅
Not exactly the same but Times Beach, Missouri is another abandoned town in the Midwest part of the US this one due to Dioxin.
I live in Flint and we had 1000s of kids who tested positive for lead because our city council decided to use the Flint
River as a drinking source. The same river that GM had their production plants on. The company had dumped their excess waste into the river for years in the early 20th century.
This could be a topic for this channel maybe??
Sadly today you can see the kids in school and many struggle. And our school system just isn't equipped for these kids today and the extra attention they needed. And entire generation of kids with mental delays and various other problems associated with lead poisoning.
I believe it was on this channel where they covered flint. Somewhere in the last year. I remember watching it. Either here or Today I found Out channel.
My family is from this area and I've been in and out of here my whole life and I've never, ever heard of this! My parents live in Grove now. This explains a lot. Wow. Thanks, Whistleboy!
Simon is EXCELLENT at explaining history and I enjoy listening to him when he does what he did in this video. Love it. Recently I have seen Simon do comedy and it is the complete opposite of the fine job he does here
I have been there a couple of times. I have some really good photos of the place. It's a very eerie place.
Just imagine how much toxic crap was thrown up in the air and spread from the tornado .
I love going back and forth between this guy's channel and Lazy Masquerade. Two totally different speeds.
Its not all bad. The shareholders in the mining companies loved it.
Speaking of Oklahoma, I think a couple of good episodes would be Moore’s EF5 history and the El Reno beast of a tornado that took the lives of my friends.
Good video.
Unfettered capitalism and a total disregard for the environment causes catastrophic harm.
Who knew?!
I grew up in SW MO in another lead/zinc mining town. We also had big chat piles around town which a lot of kids I knew played in/on, but I was never allowed to go there. I didn't realize what they were when I was little, they just seemed like gravel, and I was annoyed that my parents wouldn't let me play with the other kids. But once I understood, I was grateful and also stunned that my friends' parents allowed them to play there.
I remember when Picher was evacuated seeing an elderly lady on the news crying. She said she didn't know anywhere else and didn't want to leave. I felt so sorry for her.
Lol, I just had to go there today. This coming up in my algorithm is absolutely weird.....I had to meet the Quapaw tribe and go through the Chat fields, too.
For those who care and don't want to just talk about how bad companies are. I grew up just north of pitcher. By the time people knew how bad the contamination was a lot of the companies that were at fault no longer existed. There was a class actuon lawsuit against the companies that were still atound. By the time the tornado hit pitcher it was already mostly empty of residents. We all played on the chat piles for years and my hometown used to buy chat from there for our roads. Simon's writers do a good job of research but that is not the entire story. And finally pitcher is not a "eerie" place as people say. Its just like every small town in that part of the country, everyone left.
i work with the Quapaws there, the stories ive heard are terrible
I wouldn't go using heavy metal contaminated material for a road...😬
But like- the companies were still at fault? Doesn’t matter if they had been dissolved by then, they were still the fault. Good grief.
@NotimeforThis-fd4ye yes the companies were at fault. The lawsuit agreed to that as well. But all of this happened in a time before anyone knew the actual risks. It doesn't excuse what happened but it's also not just evil companies. There was a lot more to it.
@@NotimeforThis-fd4ye how do you hold something that doesn’t exist responsible?
I have lived in Oklahoma my entire life and THIS is the very first time I have ever heard about this event or town. I'm stunned by the facts and I can't understand how it is possible that I never even knew.
Because nobody here talks about it. It's not exactly one of our proud moments in history... imagine if they put it in the song "🎶 Oklahoma where the town gets radioactive and everyone has to leave. 🎶" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
I don't have any idea how you haven't heard of it either. I graduated Locust Grove High School in 1994 and learned about it in school. Tulsa news on 6 has done a 100 stories on it. It has been in the Tulsa World news paper 100s of times. When the 2014 tornado hit Pitcher it was covered by every state wide news agency, about possible after effects, and reassured by the Corps of Engineers, and EPA as being a none issue. Perhaps you live hundreds of miles away in Altus, or Boise City and just don't pay attention to things in Green Country???
My great grandfather was a miner in Picher who died of tuberculosis. I had a lot of family who lived in Picher who lived to old age. I live 15 minutes from Picher and have always been fascinated by it.
The mine dumps in Gauteng, South Africa are also a high toxic source, and the "hollow" soil due to years of mining is also worth to investigate.
There was also a significant amount of arson which strained emergency services as well. Probably been 15 years since I last visited, but it was eerie seeing houses left with unopened mail left on the counter, plates on the tables, clothes in the closets, etc.. Very much like they just randomly up and decided to leave one evening.
Been there several times for work, and first time was getting lost on the way back from Missouri. On one of the work jobs we weren't allowed to disturb the soil at all and we found 8 dead cows all together. Will never forget that, or seeing the tailing piles driving in every day. Some had been there so long they had their own erosion features, which was fascinating.
Welcome to America. The sad part is that this sort of negligence is far from isolated.
I grew up playing baseball here as a kid in the 90s. I was always afraid I’d fall through the ground at anytime because of the rumors people had fallen into sink holes that were riding atvs on and around the mounds.
Hey Simon, there is another town that suffered the same fate, Wittenoom Western Australia, hopefully you can do a video on that town thanks.
Does anyone else find that open door in the background, distracting, somehow sinister.
I've seen enough horror movies to know this frame of image is a foreshadowing of something horrible about to happen. :)
Scrolled through the comments to see if I was the only one anxiously staring into the abyss. 😅😅👉🏻
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Enjoyed this
My wife's grandfather was Albert Brewer, once the manger of the local bank. She spent many summers with her grandparents. After we were married we visited her grandparents there until finally both her grandparents passed away. I have many fond memories made there.
Hey Simon, the polo look suits you. Do it more often.
Okie here checking in
My mom's entire family is from this area. I visited family there in 1976 and my best memory is of the signs everywhere warning of cave in all around established residential areas. I also recall my cousins calling the chat piles " mountains". I grew up in California. My definition of what a " mountain" was very different from their's!!
Simon I just want you to know that I am trying magic spoon for the 1st time Because I saw it On the shelf department store and I remembered how good you said it was. It's definitely every bit as good as you said it was. It's more expensive than normal cereal but I'm diabetic so I'm not supposed to have normal cereal. Now cereal can be back on the menu for me every now and then. (On a side note I'm using unsweetened almond milk to minimize the carb content even more)
Getting closer to that Mr Clean look... good on ya!
I first heard of Picher as part of a documentary series the Discovery Channel put out on dangerous weather and natural phenomenon years ago, as part of the tornado episode. During the program they did say that there were no plans to rebuild the town, but they made it sound as if this was due to the destruction caused by the twister, and considering that Greensburg, KS was also part of the episode, and I already knew that town, despite being hit by an F5 tornado, was then currently in the process of rebuilding, I was always curious as to why the same was not true for Picher. Given how attached to the town some of the interviewees were, it just seemed a little unusual for some reason; there was an overhead shot from a helicopter showing where the tornado cut through town, but it looked like there were still a good number of viable structures. This finally answers all those questions I had about the town, and I realize this is almost 20 years late, but my heart still goes out to these poor people who lost everything not just because of that tornado, but because of somebody else’s greed and total disregard for the impact of their actions. Plains towns have it hard enough as it is-they don’t need that kind of burden.
Drove through Pitcher yesterday and now 12 hrs later RUclips is recommending me this video 🤔
My husband went to Northeastern A&M in the early 1990s. They used to run and climb the chat piles as training for wrestling, until they told the coach to stop doing that.
The companies who cause these environmental disasters should be forced to pay to fix them.
Big Brutus is an enormous mining machine located in SE Kansas. It would be a good subject for a video. Amazing that it only operated for about 10 years.
It's believed that the bodies of Ashley Freeman and Lauri Bible maybe in one of those mines.
It’s crazy to me that something like this happened so recently. Like, this isn’t a “back in 1801…” this was RECENT from a historical context. It’s crazy to think about.
I've driven through there. It's pretty haunting. The church was pretty cool. Kinda scary not knowing where a sinkhole may open up next
You could do a similar programme about Gilman Colorado, another mining town that suffered a similar fate.
Dude, I am so use to you talking about far off locations. Not somewhere 1.5 hours away lol
Some place I have been to. I went there and took a lot of photos in the early 2010’s unfortunately the memory card was lost over time . I went back a few years ago and the chat piles were still there but a lot of what I had the places where I had taken photos had been demolished.
2:38 are we talking about Cody Rhodes from the WWE LMFAO
Undesirable became Undeniable
I thought we were talking Stardust?
Nicely done, sir, nicely done.
1:07 skips ad
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You find town like this in every state. My state of Missouri we have timebeach.
Google Maps shows the scale of the chat piles. Most of which are multiple times larger than the high school track.
I live about 60 mi away and it's really creepy to drive around that town.
drove through Picher recently. such a strange little ghost town. like fallout 3 or something.
You should do one on "walking" tornadoes bro, shit is truly chilling.... By that I mean seeing it literally made a chill run up my entire body.... It's not a nice thing to look at
Ah, so this is what my realtor meant by "picheresque views" 🤦😅
I drive through there on occasion. There's just a rez police station. It's eerie.
i live near pitcher. used to drive thru it from time to time
I went there in 2016 to see the area and I was blown away at how post apocalyptic it looked there.
I came across a bulldozed town or neighborhood back in high school. I could never find any information about it, though. Entire buildings full of people's family photos and stuff were just flattened and nature was slowly reclaiming the materials.
I live very close to a sugar plant (sugar beets) and they have the piles of processed waste stacked up in a little white mountain in the open air... supposedly its far enough away but it gets stupid windy here and you can smell the stench from town... why is there so many asthma cases here 🤔
I visited the town in the late 90s. We were actually there to band endangered bank swallows - Picher was the home of the only population of bank swallows in Oklahoma, ironically due to the chat piles the swallows made their homes in. We knew it was contaminated, but I had no idea just *how* contaminated it was at the time. I was just a kid, mind you. I recall eating at some kind of restaurant - I think it was a diner there.
The town was already falling apart, but I don't think it had been declared a Superfund site at that time.
Discovered that my paternal grandparents with my dad and his brothers lived in Picher, OK for a number of years during the 1920’s. Gramps was a doctor so not directly involved in the mining.