Mines that turned Picher into ghost town still 50 years away from full cleanup

Mines that turned Picher into ghost town still 50 years away from full cleanup

Decades of lead and zinc mining in the area where Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri meet brought prosperity and created boom towns like Picher in Ottawa County in far northeast Oklahoma.In its heyday of mining, Picher's population swelled to 20,000. In Picher and the surrounding communities, gigantic underground mines poured millions of tons of dusty, gravelly waste onto the surface.The waste, known as chat, grew into massive mounds that dotted the…