Starting in the late 19th century, Picher was at the forefront of Oklahoma’s lead and zinc ... The chat piles – mountains of crushed limestone, dolomite and silica-laden sedimentary rock ...

PICHER, Oklahoma (CNN)-- Wearing powder blue pants ... one called out. Gray mountains of toxic gravel loomed behind the school, just out of sight, as Hoppy hobbled past a bundle of balloons ...

Even getting into Picher, Oklahoma, is not easy ... known as chat, piled high like mountains across the region. It's made up of rocky, earthen waste materials that are rejected during the mining ...

But the population of Picher, Oklahoma, slowly dwindled over the last ... The Oklahoman reported. Empty lots and a mountain of chat are all that is left in most of Picher. GARY CROW / For the ...

At its peak in 1926 — eight years after it was founded — Picher, with 14,252 residents, sat at the center of the Tri-State Mining District, a rural area of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri that ...

Undercut with mine shafts and buried under bleak, gray mountains of lead waste, this Oklahoma town is in the ... 20,000 around World War II. Already, Picher is getting down to a hard core of ...

Oklahoma's Department of Environmental Quality wants to make it illegal for young children to live in some parts of Picher ... where lead-laced mountains of gravel dominate the landscape.

The abandoned Oklahoma mining town of Picher has been described as the 'most toxic place in America'. Once home to thousands of people, Picher is now a ghost town, surrounded by mountains of ...

PICHER, Oklahoma (CNN)-- Wearing powder blue pants ... one called out. Gray mountains of toxic gravel loomed behind the school, just out of sight, as Hoppy hobbled past a bundle of balloons ...