Oklahoma Ghost Towns 21. Picher (Ottawa County)
Picher got its start as a mining camp in 1916 after the EaglePicher Zinc and Lead Company began operations in the area. This corner of Oklahoma, part of the 1,188 square-mile Tri-State Mining District, was the nation's largest lead and zinc mining complex by 1931, and produced over half the world's supply. Zinc prices skyrocketed when Germany took control of Belgian zinc mines in World War I, and Picher's population reached an estimated 2,500. The town declined between the wars, but another boom resulted from World War II, when as many as 5,000 miners were employed here. After that, the mines played out, and most people left. Today Picher is a bedroom community for workers in nearby Miami and across the state line in Joplin, Missouri. Located north of Miami on US-69.22. Sacred Heart (Pottawatomie County) 
The village grew up around Sacred Heart mission founded by the Benedictines in 1876 on Bald Hill near a military road from Fort Smith to the west. The mission, which has been called the "Cradle of Oklahoma Catholicism," was associated with a church, a school, a convent, a boys industrial school, a three story monastery, and a college that were all built over the next 25 years. Most of the original buildings were destroyed in a 1901 fire, but some were rebuilt, here and elsewhere. The famed Sac and Fox athlete Jim Thorpe attended school here, as did the popular mystery writer Tony Hillerman. Old foundations of buildings can be found, and three different cemeteries contain gravesites of Indians, monks and early settlers. Located east of Asher off SH-39.
23. Skullyville (LeFlore County)
Known also as Old Town and Oak Lodge, Skullyville was settled by the Choctaws in 1832 when they were removed from their homelands in the southeastern United States. Since the Choctaws were the first to arrive in Indian Territory, Skullyville was one of the first communities in Oklahoma. As a center where federal annuities were paid to the Choctaws, it became the site of the first Choctaw Agency and the capital of the Choctaw Nation as well as a political and education center. When Fort Coffee, established nearby on the Arkansas River in 1834 to protect the tribe, was abandoned about 1845, it became the Fort Coffee Academy for Boys and operated until the Civil War. Another Methodist school, the New Hope School for Girls, lasted from about 1845 until the Civil War, then reopened in 1871 and operated until 1896. The Skullyville Constitution of 1857 established a stable government for the Choctaw Nation here. During the Civil War, the town was a Confederate outpost and suffered Union attacks that destroyed many buildings. Although Skullyville (sometimes spelled Scullyville) was the first stop in Indian Territory on the Butterfield Overland Mail route in the late 1850s, it never regained its former importance. When the railroad bypassed the area, Skullyville was finished. Nothing remains of the old town except the cemetery, one of the oldest in Oklahoma. Located east of Spiro off SH-9.24. Slick (Creek County)
One of the greatest of the wildcatters, Tom B. Slick, lent his name to this oil boomtown in the 1920s. Slick, also known as "Mad Tom Slick" and "Dry Hole Slick," brought in the discovery well here in 1919. Within weeks, tents and shacks became stores and pool halls, and the town was flooded with roustabouts. During the 1920s Slick developed into a supply center for the oil business as well as area farms. An extra-large depot on the Oklahoma-Southwestern Railway Company line accommodated the crowds. But the boom was shortlived, and by 1930 the town had declined to a few hundred residents. The railroad tracks have all been removed, and the depot has been converted into a church. Located southeast of Bristow on SH-16.