Picher, Oklahoma
Mine Cave-ins
Photos by John Schehrer
This huge cave-in at the Silver Fox mine, near Treece, Kansas occurred in 1966.  This underground cavern caved in taking an acre of land with it and opening up a hole over a hundred feet deep.  The pillars are foundation blocks for the former mill that stood there.
This gigantic mine roof collapse occurred in July, 1967 at Picher and took several houses in with it.  Houses in the center of the cave-in settled down with the rest of the land around them and were largely undamaged, but who wants a house at the bottom of a hole.  Spectators came from miles around to view the spectacular event which had national TV coverage.  Fortunately, no one was injured in the cave-in which occurred at nightime.



A large cave-in occurred right next to the Ritz mine derrick and almost caused the structure to topple into the newly formed pit.  The mined land became unstable after gougers removed some of the ore rich pillars in the gigantic room many feet below the ground.