Douthat, Oklahoma: Poisoned by the Mine

Two miles south of Picher lies Douthat, a small community named in nineteen seventeen for the man who owned the townsite. Like Picher, it grew on the back of the lead and zinc boom that made Ottawa County one of the most productive mining regions in North America. And like Picher, it paid the price.

When the mines closed in the mid-twentieth century workers left for other places, and the land they left behind turned out to be laced with heavy metals from decades of ore processing. Douthat is now part of the Tar Creek Superfund site, one of the most contaminated pieces of ground in the United States. The town is now abandoned.

The soil, the water, the chat piles that glitter silver in the sun, all carry lead levels dangerous enough that the town now stands abandoned.