
Toxic Town: Picher, Oklahoma
This is Picher, Oklahoma, an American exclusion zone. An acquaintance with an enthusiastic political streak recently told me Picher, Oklahoma is a ghost town because of a tornado. It’s true, an F4 tornado did strike Picher in 2008 and damaged 150 homes, but it was merely the final straw. From 2000 to 2010, Picher’s population dropped from over 1,600 residents to twenty. Picher is a town destroyed by industrial abuses, specifically, the mining industry. This former town near the Kansas…