The story
Treece sat literally across the state line from Picher — one mining community split by a border, sharing the Tri-State district's lead, its jobs, and eventually its poison. When Oklahoma bought out Picher, Treece's remaining hundred-odd residents successfully lobbied Kansas and the EPA for the same, and the town dissolved in 2012.
Two states, one lesson, a few hundred yards apart: the pair make the clearest before-and-after in American environmental history, and the emptied grids now blur together under the same gray hills of mine waste.
What remains today
Foundations, a few shells, and chat piles continuous with Picher's — the border marked only by the map.
From the archives
Treece turns up on 2,900 digitized newspaper pages from Kansas — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- How is Treece different from Picher?
- Mostly by state: Kansas's buyout came a few years after Oklahoma's, after residents argued it made no sense to leave one town standing in the same contaminated field. Both are now dissolved municipalities.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Treece — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Treece's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 469375
- — EPA / KDHE — Treece relocation records
- — Cherokee County histories