when the creek ran red

We used to swim in it. Fish in it. Skip school just to feel the cold water cut past our legs. Tar Creek wasn’t just a drainage ditch—it was part of the rhythm of Picher. It snaked past the high school and through the chat piles, shallow and quiet. We had no idea it was slowly turning on us.

What follows is a memory—one part childhood, one part warning—and a firsthand glimpse at what happens when something you love starts bleeding from the inside out.

Welcome to my backyard. Not the manicured kind with a white fence and a swing set. No, this one came with sinkholes, orange water, and warnings we didn't understand until we were grown.

You’ve probably never heard of Tar Creek, but for those of us who grew up in or around Picher, Oklahoma, it wasn’t just a name. It was the place where everything came together—and where everything started falling apart.

Tar Creek runs through the heart of the old Tri-State Mining District, which—once upon a boom—pumped out more lead and zinc than just about anywhere else in the country. At its peak in the 1920s and '30s, mining made Picher a bustling town of 20,000, full of promise and paychecks.

But underneath that promise was a ticking time bomb.

When the mining companies pulled out and shut down the pumps that kept groundwater at bay, everything changed. The mines filled up with water. And that water? It mixed with exposed minerals underground—mostly iron sulfide—and turned acidic. That acid water picked up heavy metals like lead, zinc, cadmium, and iron, then pushed up through the abandoned mine shafts and into Tar Creek.

You want to know what environmental disaster looks like? Picture a creek running the color of a rusted-out pickup, frothy with toxins. That’s what we had.

And we played in it.

We didn’t know any better. Our bikes bounced along trails near the chat piles, we fished in the murky water, and we tracked the dust home on our shoes. The lead levels in the soil and dust were off the charts—especially dangerous for kids. Later, they tested us. Many of us had elevated blood lead levels. They started shutting down schools. People moved. Picher eventually became a ghost town. But the damage was already done.

Tar Creek became one of the first sites added to the EPA’s Superfund list in 1983. That’s government-speak for “this place is so toxic, we don’t even know where to start.” And to be fair, they’ve tried—replacing contaminated soil, closing wells, rerouting the creek. But it’s like bailing out a boat with a coffee mug while the hole keeps growing.

The chat piles—those mountains of leftover crushed rock—are still there, looming over the prairie like silent witnesses. They hold thousands of tons of heavy metal-laced waste. When the wind blows (and it always does), that dust goes everywhere.

This isn’t ancient history. This is still happening. Tar Creek continues to bleed orange to this day.

And yet, somehow, we still loved it here. We still laughed and played and made memories in the shadows of a disaster. That’s the paradox of Picher—it was poisoned ground, but it was ours.

The Tar Creek story isn’t just about contamination—it’s about consequences, resilience, and memory. It’s about how a place can both shape you and scar you. And it’s why I keep telling these stories—because if we don’t, all that’s left is silence and sludge.