Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Quapaw, OK

Quapaw is a town in Ottawa County, Oklahoma, that serves as the capital of the Quapaw Nation, the federally recognized tribe also known as the Ogáxpa, or 'Downstream People.'

Quapaw sits about nine miles northeast of Miami, the county seat, and is the last town in Oklahoma on U.S. Highway 69A before the Kansas state line; it is part of the Joplin, Missouri metropolitan area.

The community began in 1891 when Kansas farmer Isaac Bingham moved his family onto Quapaw Nation land in Ottawa County and opened businesses, while Quapaw Chief John Quapaw donated land for a community school.

After lead and zinc were discovered in the area, community leaders platted 'New Town Quapaw' on land purchased from Harry Whitebird, and the new town was incorporated in 1917.

Quapaw boomed as part of the Tri-State mining district — its first census in 1920 counted 1,394 residents — and U.S. Route 66 was paved through town by 1933, an event celebrated with Quapaw Chief Victor Griffin laying a zinc tablet in the center of Main Street.

As mining declined, Quapaw's population fell to 1,054 by 1940 and a low of 850 in 1960; Burggraf Tire, founded in the 1940s, remained a local mainstay into the twenty-first century.

Quapaw had 811 residents in the 2020 census, down from 906 in 2010 and 984 in 2000, and the town covers about 0.6 square miles.

The Quapaw Nation operates two casinos in Quapaw — the Quapaw Casino and the Downstream Casino Resort — which are the tribe's primary economic drivers, along with the Eagle Creek Golf Course and resort in Loma Linda, Missouri.

Every Fourth of July, the Quapaw Tribe hosts one of Oklahoma's oldest powwows on the Quapaw Tribal Grounds southeast of town, an event that began as a tribal picnic and drew 45 tribes from 17 states in 2003.

The Quapaw Nation's roughly 13,000-acre tribal jurisdictional area includes the Tar Creek Superfund site, one of the nation's largest environmental cleanup areas, a legacy of the lead and zinc mining era.