Picher, Oklahoma
74360
Picher, Oklahoma
The Town That Refused to Die
A poisoned town. A proud people. A story worth remembering.
Beneath the headlines calling Picher “America’s most toxic town” lies a deeper truth — one that can’t be measured in lead levels or EPA reports. It’s the story of a community that refused to give up. Of kids who raced their bikes across chat piles that glowed white in the sun. Of families who built lives, faith, and friendships in the shadow of the mines. That’s the Picher I knew — before the buyouts, before the fences, before the world stopped listening. And it’s the world I bring back to life in my memoir, Barefoot and Bulletproof: The Dirty Little Glover Boys.
A Boomtown Born from the Ground Up
In 1913, miners struck lead and zinc beneath a quiet patch of Oklahoma prairie. Within a decade, Picher was one of the most productive mining towns in America — a place that helped fuel two world wars and put food on thousands of tables.
Main Street was alive with hardware stores, diners, barbers, and churches. Friday nights meant football games, Coke floats, and loud laughter. Nobody talked about toxicity back then — only toughness.
Picher people were forged in grit, not steel — but they were every bit as strong.
The Cost Beneath the Surface
When the mining stopped, the scars didn’t.
Beneath the ground, hollowed tunnels began to collapse.
Above it, mountains of mining waste — “chat” — turned playgrounds into poisoned fields.
Children had lead in their blood. The creek ran orange. The government called it hopeless.
By 2008, after a devastating tornado, Picher was declared unlivable. The town was disincorporated, its zip code erased.
But not its memory.
More Than a Place — A People
Picher was a lesson in grit, humor, and heart.
We learned to fix things before they broke — and laugh when they did anyway.
We played baseball on cracked fields and swam in ponds we shouldn’t have survived.
We believed in each other long after the rest of the world stopped believing in us.
That spirit — that never-say-die heartbeat — still echoes in every story I tell.
Because Picher may have vanished from the map, but it never left the people who lived there.
The Book That Remembers Before It’s Too Late
Barefoot and Bulletproof isn’t a story about tragedy. It’s about triumph through memory — a boyhood lived in a place that was tougher, wilder, and more unforgettable than anyone ever knew.
It’s a love letter to a lost town — and a reminder that remembrance is a form of resistance.
“Muscular, heartfelt, and damn impressive.”
— Don Maass, top-tier literary agent and author of Writing the Breakout Novel
“Wow. I laughed, cried, and remembered. You brought our town back to life for me.”
— Lisa Grimes Berry, Reader
If you’ve ever loved a place that disappeared — this story is for you.