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I was born and raised in that area.I should have died many years ago from playing on those chat piles, swimming in and eating fish from those old mine ponds. I spent many years playing around those old mines.

I saw something about Cardin that said it was one of the most toxic places on the planet. It showed some pictures. So I got curious as to what happened. Why it was abandoned.

Research

Overland Park KS although my mother was born and raised in Ishpeming MI, an iron-ore mining town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan

My wife\'s family is in Dallas and we have driven Kansas City-Dallas 5/6 time a year for 30+ years, usually south to Joplin west to Big Cabin on the turnpike and south on 69/75 to the east side of Dallas. Thanksgiving 2009 I just drove 69S through Kansas and discovered Picher while the town was still standing. Last Thanksgiving 2021 drove through south-to-north and saw Christmas decorations and the new Memorial Garden (a labor of love not just a roadside historical marker) so did some research leading down many rabbit holes (some very educational and others outright misleading and exploitative alas). It also inspired me to learn more about Ishpeming which I had not visited since a child and while still a living town it has endured the same subsidence and economic hardships as Picher-Cardin-Treece.

It is very clear that Picher-Cardin-Treece communities formed a very special bond which people from larger towns will never understand (my high school class was 500+), not to mention never being able to \'go home again\'. Seeing short TV clips of the Memorial Garden and Parade brought a smile to my face as we need more feel-good stories today than ever. God Bless all of you; your community will never be gone so long as you hold it so dear in your hearts.

Through your new link

Picher Oklahoma ( Bentonville AR current )

Most interesting website on internet. Please don’t go away as this is a major link for Picher people.

Cory Smith Research

Googling Hilburn

Chicago, IL

Just a quick thank you, folks. I\'m a researcher putting together a dataset on county seat elections. I had only an approximate idea of the location of Hilburn, but you folks mapped it out. Much appreciation! :+1:

My mother - Charlene Trainor (Peace)

Littleton, CO

I\'m looking for photos of my mother Charlene Trainor-Peace. She graduated from Pitcher in 1960. If there are pictures of her on this site I\'d love to see them - I\'ve seen her 1960 graduation pics. My grandfather Charlie Peace was a miner in the Lucky Jew and the M&M mine.

I\'m hoping to put a memory book together for her. Let me know if there are more photos here of her. I remember once seeing a picture of her sitting on the floor, maybe smoking, with some friends - can\'t find that pic. And I think she was a cheerleader too.

A portfolio for photography and videography

Picher Christmas Parade

Columbia, MO

Thank you to whom ever keeps this website up and running. I\'m a graduate photojournalism student working on a project about Picher, Cardin, the mines and the former residents of the two towns. I\'ve made about four trips to the area now — with more to come — and this website has been invaluable to my background research.

This guestbook is amazing too. Its clear from this page and its guestbook, as well as the Christmas parade that the people who used to live in these two towns still love them and hold them dear. It\'s unlike anything I\'ve seen before.

Ethan Weston

Brother Robert

Raised in Whitebird Addition of Cardin, West of Cardin, Now live in Mckinney, TX

Fredas,
We enjoy this site, my wife June C. (Pierce) Turner and I.
Just want to mention, We miss the Reunion pictures, we had so much fun seeing who we knew soon to be 60 years ago.

my brother Robert Turner brought it to my attetion many years ago

McKinney, Texas

Janis Ann Turner of Monkey Island, OK passed from this life Tuesday, June 18, 2019 at her home. She was 79.
Janis was born August 20, 1939 in Picher, OK to James Harvey and Ruby Christine (DeWeese) Lawhead. Janis had lived on Monkey Island for the past 60 years. She was a member of Lake Center Baptist Church, Monkey Island, OK where she was very active in children’s department and in the kitchen. She also served as song leader, treasurer and a Sunday school teacher and she was a caretaker of many people.
She was preceded in death by her parents, a brother, Jerry Lawhead and a sister, Emily Buchanan.
Survivors include her husband Carl Turner of the home, 2 daughters, Teresa Ann Dill and husband Richard of Claremore, OK and Carla Jo Apple and husband Ray of El Reno, OK, her brother, James Lawhead of Baxter Springs, KS, 4 sisters, Mary Ann Purscelley of Quapaw, OK, Dorothy Bennett of Colcord, OK, Marlene Boyd of Lawton, OK and Debbie Sargent of Joplin, MO, 8 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.
Funeral services will be 1:00 p.m. Friday June 21, 2019 at Lake Center Baptist Church, Monkey Island, OK. Rev. Kim Hayes and Rev. Caleb Jernigan will officiate. Interment will be in G.A.R. Cemetery in Miami, OK. Richard Dill, Ray Apple, Kenny Sturges, Joel Woodward, Ben Schraad, Kyle Keiffer will serve as pallbearers. Carl Tesreau and Reggie Stone will serve as honorary pallbearers. The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday evening at the Paul Thomas Funeral Home Chapel in Miami, OK. Services have been placed in the care of the Paul Thomas Funeral Home and Cremation Service of Miami, OK

Bonnie Sue (Duncan) O’Neill
February 25, 2019
Bonnie Sue (Duncan) O’Neill passed away unexpectedly at her home with her family in Kingston, Idaho on February 22, 2019, at the age of 74. Funeral Services will be held on Friday, March 1st, at 2:00 p.m. at St. Rita’s Catholic Church in Kellogg, Idaho... We will miss her, she was a great little Cardin kid, loved to ride horse, and a beautiful family, lots of grandchildren

My Little Sister, Bonnie (Duncan) O\'Neill, passed away Friday. She was born in California, but we lived in Cardin and Picher, we moved to Idaho when she was 16.

Fair Oaks California

Brought into this world by Doc Butler in 1942
Both maternal and paternal parents lived on s emily st picher ok

A friend of my fathers

pollock pines ca.

My father Robert(Bob)Foreman was raised in Picher, and went to High school there. He played basketball and football, he\'s 93 now and still talks about growing up there!!!

Cardin, Okla

I don\'t remember who told me about this site but have found a lot of people I remember not only from grade school and Picher High. I want to thank you for all the work you have done.

Susie\'s

Miami Oklahoma

Does anyone have any knowledge about the 1962 cave in of the Velie Lion mine north of Cardin and the 2 men that were killed in it ?

Research for a 7th Grade Research Project

Muskogee, Oklahoma

I am a thirteen year old girl from Muskogee, Oklahoma. A friend and I are working on a project in which we are to research an Oklahoman \'Ghost Town.\' We selected Cardin, only to find that there is hardly ANYTHING about the Pitcher/Cardin area online. So, in a desperate search, I stumbled across this website. Sure, it\'s a little tacky, and the formatting is slightly outdated, but aside from that, it\'s a fabulous website. It\'s amazing to read all the things that everybody has written, and submitted. It has drastically improved our report, and I just wanted to say thank you. Being from Muskogee, I had never heard of Cardin, let alone known anything about it. It\'s been a super cool experience learning about Cardin and the people in it. Most people in my grade thought that Cardin would be an old town full of miners and hillbillies, but it\'s so much more. But anyway, thank you. I appreciate all the links and pictures of this town, and it\'s sad it had to go down in history the way it did.

Hey Fredas. I still enjoy your site and come back to it all the time. Thanks again for maintaining it

Do not have a website

NA

by referral

Baxter Springs

I have some old pictures of my mother\'s grade schools which were the Elm Creek School (1936) and the Lincolnville School (1937). My mother defaced her image in these pictures. I\'d like to get copies of these pictures, and any other pictures you or anyone else might have of her. Her name was Elvena Mae Taylor. She attended Quapaw for high school Did not graduate but attended there through 1941. She later married my father, Marion \"Spike\" Congdon. They lived in Baxter. She later became a beautician. I\'d submit these photos to you, if you care to have them.

St Louis

Does anyone know of a woman named Effie Pennington Conner? She is my grandmother. I don\'t have anyone on my father\'s side that would be a good historian. My father was born in Cardin. Any help would be wonderful Thank you!

Sand Springs ok

Grew up and graduated from Picher High School