Origins of The Tar Creek Superfund Site
The area now known as Tar Creek is part of the Tri-State mining district, an area of 1,188 square miles located in Ottawa County, Southwestern Missouri and Southeastern Kansas. The first mining activities took place in Missouri around 1850. By 1908, sites had been started in Miami, Picher, and Commerce. Railroads being built in the area greatly increased production. Mining quickly had a high economic impact, and by 1924 most of the young, American born whites in the district were employed by the mining industry.
When mining began in the area, most of the land was owned by the Quapaw tribe. An 1897 ruling and subsequent lawsuits determined mining was allowed to commence in the area, but only about one sixth of Quapaw landowners were allowed to collect royalties. Between 1915 and 1930, decreasing demand and production caused companies to buy the land rather than lease it, which encouraged high consolidation of mining companies.
1926 was the highest year of production in the area, and Ottawa county became the world's largest source of lead and zinc. During World War I, the region supplied 45 percent of the lead and 50 percent of the zinc used by the U.S. Further advances in technology also increased production. Between 1908 and 1950, the entire Tri-State Mining Region generated over an estimated 1 billion U.S. dollars. After 1950, many of the mines were shut down largely due to environmental impacts.
Read more about this topic: Tar Creek Superfund Site
Famous quotes containing the words origins of, origins, tar, creek and/or site:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate;
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry to a sailor, ‘Go hang!’
She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
Yet a tailor might scratch her where’er she did itch:
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The only law was that enforced by the Creek Lighthorsemen and the U.S. deputy marshals who paid rare and brief visits; or the “two volumes of common law” that every man carried strapped to his thighs.”
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. relief program (1935-1943)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)