Picher, Ok - A Modern Ghost Town

Picher used to be a zinc and lead mining town until 1970. In 2006, the federal government made it a superfund site to clean up the toxic waste, and paid people to leave. The piles of mine waste (called chat) around the town and neighboring areas are blowing around freely. Some of the piles even looked like they were moving, alot like sand dunes in Saudi Arabia which are slowly moving and sometimes swallow towns. The chat in the air is believed to increase the cancer rates and the amount of autistic children in this town.

We drove through it on our way home from Kansas City in April and wondered why it was abandoned so we looked it up. Here are some sites:

http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/06/30/picher-oklahoma/

http://www.grandlakevisitor.com/pichersuperfundsite

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picher,_Oklahoma

A building damaged by tornado.


An abandoned home.


The environmental clean up crew.


The Museum of Mining for the area.


Picher Water Tower.


The Gorilla for the Picher Schools.




One of the many chat piles scattered around the area. There were about five right in town.

KCMo - The Plaza

A grain silo that a tornado or wind took care of. Sorry its fuzzy.
We went through the town of Hamilton going to and from Adam-ondi-Ahman. It was the birthplace of JC Penney. Poor guy, if only the Boy Scouts hadn't got a hold of him.



I guess maybe this isn't a very good picture. But they had the Rock Festival here in Kansas City and we had to go through a lot of traffic at that exit to get to the Plaza. I thought the Rock Festival was in Oklahoma City, I guess I never really listened to the DJs when they talked about where it was. I guess they turned the park into a mudhole. It was just too rainy.


Horse Drawn Carriages around the Plaza


PF Chang's, where we went to eat at the Plaza.


A Plaza lamp post, unfortunately I didn't get the famous fountain.

Missouri KCMo Area

The Independence Missouri Visitor Center for the Church of Jesus Christ.


The Harry S. Truman Library, obviously not one of the great presidents he is also not remembered as one of the bad ones either, of course, maybe no one will be considered a bad president once Obama is through because at least the bad ones did somethings right.


An classic old McDonalds.


The Second of the Three small British cars I saw this day. I missed the first but once I saw the second I knew there'd be more.


The bridges over what I think was the Missouri River, my picture of the Missouri at this time was unsuccessful.


The Third of Three Triumphs I saw this day in Independence, must have been a car show or club meeting.


Liberty Jail.


A pretty backcountry stretch.

Kansas to Missouri

A Mound City water tower. I guess there's a lake around here and those people have to truck their own water in, so they all have pickups with water tanks in the back.


A Beautiful view of the valley near Mound City and before Pleasanton.


Beautiful rock s that line the highway sometimes in Missouri.


A cool bridge that marks the entrance of Independence Missouri. Of all the talk of how bad a place Independence Missouri was and how trashy I was surprised about how nice it is. I was expecting the projects.


Community of Christ (The name of the new church based off the old RLDS church) Temple. Such a joke. Sorry to take them so lightly but going to that church and hearing their version of their story,...

O-City to Mound City.

The McDonald's over I44 in Vinita OK.



Interesting pedesbridge in Ft Scott.


In Ft Scott, some sort of barbie or bar joint.

Somewhere between Ft Scott and Pleasanton but at one point this smoke pillar looked a little like a 'nader.

May 10th Norman Tornado Action.

See my post on my other blog:

http://waddelldaddy.blogspot.com/2010/06/retroaction-may-10th-tornado-damage.html

New Blog - DBO Norman 365

Since I am no longer driving for John Deere Landscapes I do not get to see the vast expanse of Oklahoma to take my pictures for this blog. Most of travels remain in the towns of Noble and Norman. I have created a new blog DBO: Norman 365 to showcase the towns I live in. Although it is called DBO: Norman it will include Noble. If I travel outside of these two towns and take pictures they will show up on this blog so check in every once and a while or follow me on Blogger or Google Reader.

Also this is to keep you from seeing muddy trucks and lame cars instead of actually interesting Oklahoma locales.