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Picher is a ghost town and former city in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, United States. Much of the land was originally owned by the Quapaw after Indian removal. In the early 20th century, mining took place initially under federal leases of these lands but the Quapaw did not receive a fair share of royalties and were generally excluded from the thousands of mining jobs in the region. In 2000 they comprised a significant minority of the population in the city. This was a major national center of lead and zinc mining at the heart of the Tri-State Mining District. More than a century of unrestricted subsurface excavation dangerously undermined most of Picher's town buildings and left giant piles of toxic metal-contaminated mine tailings (known as chat) heaped throughout the area. The discovery of the cave-in risks, groundwater contamination, and health effects associated with the chat piles and subsurface shafts resulted in the site being included in 1980 in the Tar Creek Superfund Site by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The state collaborated on mitigation and remediation measures, but a 1996 study found that 34% of the children in Picher suffered from lead poisoning due to these environmental effects, which could result in lifelong neurological problems.〔(Treece Journal: Welcome to Our Town. Wish We Weren’t Here ). Susan Saulny, ''The New York Times,'' September 13, 2009〕 Eventually EPA and the state of Oklahoma agreed to a mandatory evacuation and buyout of the entire township. The similarly contaminated satellite towns of Treece, Kansas and Cardin, Oklahoma were included in the Tar Creek Superfund site. A 2006 Army Corps of Engineers study showed 86% of Picher's buildings (including the town school) were badly undermined and subject to collapse at any time.〔()〕 The destruction of 150 homes by an F4 tornado in May 2008 accelerated the exodus. On September 1, 2009, the state of Oklahoma officially dis-incorporated the city of Picher.The town ceased official operations on September 1, 2009 and the population plummeted from 1,640 at the 2000 census to 20 at the 2010 census. As of January 2011, only six homes and one business remain, their owners having refused to leave at any price. The rest of the town's buildings, except designated historical structures, were scheduled to be demolished by the end of the year. Picher is among a small number of locations in the world (such as Gilman, Colorado, Centralia, Pennsylvania, and Wittenoom, Western Australia) to be evacuated and declared uninhabitable due to environmental and health damage caused by the mines the town once serviced. The closest towns to Picher, other than nearby Cardin, Treece and Douthat, are Commerce, Quapaw (the headquarters of the nation by that name) and Miami, Oklahoma ==History== In 1913, as the Tri-State district expanded, lead and zinc ore were discovered on Harry Crawfish's claim and mining began. A townsite developed overnight around the new workings and was named Picher in honor of O. S. Picher, owner of Picher Lead Company. The city was incorporated in 1918, and by 1920, Picher had a population of 9,726. Peak population occurred in 1926 with 14,252 residents and was followed by a gradual decline due to the decrease in mining activity, leaving Picher with only 2,553 by 1960.〔(Dianna Everett. ''Tri-State Lead and Zinc District''. )〕 The Picher area became the most productive lead-zinc mining field in the Tri-State district, producing over $20 billion worth of ore between 1917 and 1947. More than fifty percent of the lead and zinc metal used during World War I were produced by the Picher district. At its peak more than 14,000 miners worked the mines and another 4,000 worked in mining services. Many workers commuted by an extensive trolley system from as far away as Joplin and Carthage, Missouri.〔 Mining ceased in 1967 and water pumping from the mines ceased. The contaminated water from some 14,000 abandoned mine shafts, 70 million tons of mine tailings, and 36 million tons of mill sand and sludge remained as a huge environmental cleanup problem.〔 As a result of national legislation to identify and remediate such environmentally hazardous sites, in 1980 the area was designated as part of the Tar Creek Superfund site. While some remediation took place in the following quarter century, contamination and other environmental hazards were found to be so severe that the government decided to close Picher and relocate its residents, as reported on April 24, 2006, by Reuters. Due in large part to the removal of large amounts of subsurface material during mining operations, many of the city's structures have been deemed in imminent danger of caving in.〔Gillam, Carey. - ("FEATURE-Slow death consumes Oklahoma mining town" ) - Reuters - April 24, 2006〕 The city's pharmacist, Gary Linderman, was featured in the May 28, 2007, issue of ''People'' magazine in the ''Heroes Among Us'' article: "Prescription for Kindness". He vowed to stay as long as there was anyone left who needed him and to be the last one out of the city.〔Heroes Among Us: "Prescription for Kindness" - ''People Magazine'' - May 28, 2007〕 Linderman died on June 6, 2015, at age 60 after a sudden illness. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Picher, Oklahoma」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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