In the early 1900s, the town of Times Beach, Missouri, was a new and promising town with a very bright future ahead of it. But by the end of the century, the area would be completely abandoned and left behind as a real life ghost town. If anyone tried to visit it, all they would see was massive danger and caution.

Signs deliberately spread out all over the outskirts, desperately warning people not to enter due to contamination. And if you were to visit Times Beach today, you would find that the entire town no longer even exists. So how did this all happen? Well, it all starts off with the newspaper. Welcome back, guys. My name is Andy Jang, and this is Hidden Stories.

In 1925, a missouri newspaper called the Saint Louis Star Times came up with an extremely unique idea for an advertising campaign. The owners of the newspaper decided to purchase a pretty big area of land around 15 miles southwest of Saint Louis, Missouri, along the Merrimack River. Then they began selling off large 20 by 100 foot plots of this land for the relatively cheap price of $67.50 or around $900 today.

Their idea was to create a luxurious resort town near Saint Louis, full of beach houses for the elite members of society to make getaways to each summer. And since each land purchase automatically came with a free six month subscription to the start times. The owners of the newspaper were hopeful that the growth and development of this new town could help and serve stability for them and their business over the next few decades.

At first, their plans seemed to be working. The plot of land that they had purchased soon turned into a small, rapidly growing town, which they named Times Streets. But unfortunately, this success was very short lived. With both the Great Depression and World War Two starting over the next few decades, people very quickly could just no longer afford to buy summer homes for themselves.

Furthermore, since Times Beach had been built so close to the Merrimack River, it was extremely susceptible to flooding, which contributed to many people leaving as well. As a result, although Times Beach, which started off as an elite resort, the town soon transformed into a suburb of mostly low income housing. Its peak population of 2000 residents quickly dropped to just under 1200.

And in June of 1951, the Saint Louis Star-Times itself went out of business, bringing its owner's hopes and dreams for Tom Beach to a definitive end. By the 1970s, although Times Beach still existed, not much about the town had improved or grown at all. And it was dirt poor. Pretty much all 23 miles of roads and streets in Time Beach were completely unpaved, which are directly led to a huge problem as countless different cars and people traveled over all the dirt roads and streets every day.

They were constantly dispersing dust from the ground, causing there to always be an unbearable layer in the air, especially during the summer months. This dust was extremely uncomfortable and frustrating for the residents of Time Beach to deal with. And in 1972, they simply had enough. They decided to finally pull together some money to hire a man named Russell Bliss, who owned a local business that disposed of waste oils and always had tons of spare oil on hand.

Since Russell also ran a side gig where for a small fee, he would spray a layer of his oil onto the unpaved roads and streets in poor neighborhoods to prevent any dust from rising. This provided a quick and affordable solution to an extremely annoying problem for the residents of Time Beach. As such, before long, people were so heavily relying on Russell just for them to have clean air to breathe, that the city officially signed a contract with him, allowing them to spray his oil whenever and wherever he wanted in times Beach for the next two years.

But when none of time Beach's residents had any way of knowing at the time and what Russell Bliss himself likely didn't even know was that it wasn't just harmless oil that he was spraying all throughout the town. It was something far more toxic and far more deadly. And by the time the entire truth was finally revealed, he would already be too late.

You see, at the time, around 200 miles away from Town Beach in Verona, Missouri, there was a large chemical facility owned by a company called Hoffman Tuff. Now, among other things, Hoffman Tuff had been contracted by the United States military to produce a deadly herbicide called Agent Orange. This herbicide had originally been created to be deployed in Vietnam to quickly destroy the dense forests that were providing cover for the enemies.

But little could anyone have expected that Agent Orange would also have a horrifying, unintentional side effect. Not only was it highly toxic to crops, it also proved to be highly toxic to humans. Once it entered people's bodies, it quickly began to cause numerous devastating skin conditions, cancers, diabetes, birth defects and other disabilities. Ultimately, an estimated 300,000 U.S. veterans and 400,000 Vietnamese people would pass away from exposure to Agent Orange.

And in 1971, the herbicide was completely banned from being used or produced ever again. It would eventually be discovered that the specific reason that Agent Orange was so deadly to humans is because of a chemical compound called dioxin. Since dioxin can be up to 10,000 times more deadly than the poison cyanide, it's known as one of the most toxic chemicals on the planet.

And as it turns out, dioxin is not only just present in Agent Orange. It's also created as waste in the production of Agent Orange. As a result, Hoffman's House facility in Verona, Missouri, where they produce the herbicide, had an entire residue tank, basically just full of deadly dioxin waste. The company's workers would basically just hold the toxin here until they could properly dispose of it, which actually wouldn't have been a problem at all if it hadn't been for the series of highly unfortunate and highly irresponsible events that happened next.

After the U.S. military finally banned the use and production of Agent Orange, Hoffman's have understandably been looking for new business ventures to get into. However, since they were unable to find much, they soon decided to just begin leasing parts of their chemical facility to other companies to make money that way. The main company that they began working with this way, it was called the North Eastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company or the Packer.

The compound that the Packard primarily produced was called Hexa Chlorophyl, which at the time was widely used as a disinfectant and various hand soaps, toothpastes and other topical products. Unfortunately today we know that lexicography and it's actually highly toxic as well. During the 1970s, however, it was used in a wide range of household products. And since manufacturing has of course, been also produces dioxin near Pasco was able to conveniently dump their waste in the same dioxin rescue tank that Hoffman's half had already been used.

But with the sheer amount of dioxin that was being produced, this tank soon became full and the waste needed to be disposed of. Although the safest and most effective way to do this by far was through incineration, that method was extremely costly and as a result, wanted to recuperate as much profit as they possibly could. Now, Packard basically just decided to hire the lowest bidder to do the work for them.

In the end, they contracted a company called the Independent Petrochemical Corporation, or IPC, to transfer all the dioxin waste away and dispose of it for them. Although in theory, this may have worked. Of course, IPC wasn't willing to go through the costly incineration process either. So the moment they received the barrels of dioxin from the Pasco IPC, then also just decided to go and hire the lowest bidder who could dispose of the waste for them.

And as it turns out, this lowest bidder was none other than Russell Blitz, a local man who owned a waste oil disposal business. And also, from time to time, spread these oils on unpaved roads. So basically in the Pequot had agreed to pay IPC $3,000 per load for the dioxin waste disposal. IPC then in turn had offered to pay Russell Bliss just a mere fraction of that, only $125 per load to do the exact same work.

The only problem was Russell Bliss never did actually dispose of the deadly dioxin waste. Once IPC had handed off the barrels to him, he simply did what he had always done, which was mix them into his own oil supply and then occasionally use that supply to spray onto the ground. It's unknown for certain whether Russell knew or not just exactly what he was putting out into the world.

In fact, even if he had known what he was putting out into the world, it's unlikely that he would have truly understood just how harmful and deadly dioxin could really be. Practically no one at the time knew how deadly you could be. Regardless, though, Russell has always maintained that IPC simply told him that the barrels contain harmless waste oil.

However, IPC, on the other hand, has always claimed that Russell knew exactly what he was receiving and agreed to take the barrels to a local atomic waste site for proper disposal. But the thing is, no such local atomic waste disposal site has ever actually existed. And since Russell went on to spray dioxin waste onto his very own farm in horse arena to control the dust problems there, it's likely that he truly had no idea what he was doing.

Over the next few weeks and months, Russell went out to sprays, dioxin and a number of additional locations, including several other horse arenas, as well as the town of Times Beach, Missouri. It didn't take long at all for people to suddenly realize that something was very, very real. Within just a few days, the Russell riding the spray horse arena in Moscow, Miller's Missouri birds began to drop dead from the rafters of the barn, and the horses began developing nasty looking sores and also began losing their hair.

Within several months, 62 horses had suddenly died and the owners of the horse arena were also exhibiting signs of illness, including bad headaches, nosebleeds, abdominal pain and diarrhea. At another horse arena near Jefferson City, Missouri. Soon after Russell's visit, 12 originally healthy horses suddenly passed away and several children developed clearly a scary skin condition associated with dioxin poisoning.

Yet a third horse arena near St Louis also saw similar repercussions right after hiring Russell to come spray their property. And in Times Beach, Missouri, many residents soon began experiencing unexplained cases of hives swelling in their lips and faces and other sudden illnesses. The very moment the Centers for Disease Control or the CDC found out about these strange deaths and illnesses, they immediately became very concerned.

They quickly launched an investigation into the areas where these deaths and illnesses were occurring. But despite taking numerous blood and soil samples, the CDC was unable to identify a specific chemical culprit. Right away. It wasn't until three years later, in 1974, that they finally realized that most of the soil samples that they were studying contained dioxin concentrations of over 30 parts per million.

Although the CDC didn't know much about the effects of dioxin on humans at the time, it was extremely alarming for them to see just how lethal the compound had been for animals. As a result, the center immediately set out to look at all of the other possible dioxin contamination sites to try to learn more about the toxin and also to see just how humans in this contaminated areas had been responding to it as they were searching for the source of this widespread dioxin contamination as well.

The CDC came across Russell Blitz and discovered to their shock that the oil he had been spraying contained extremely high concentrations of the toxin. When the CDC questioned Russell about this, he adamantly stated that he had no idea what dioxin was and had no idea how on earth it could have gone into his oil. By then, however, he'd already been spraying roads in the town of Times Beach for two entire years, releasing more than 150 gallons of dioxin oil into the environment.

But despite the fact that the people in Times Beach, as well as in the other areas of Missouri that Russell had been visiting, could have been at a very high risk of danger, including severe injury or even death. Ultimately, no one decided to warn anyone at all about the dioxin contamination. This was primarily because at the time the CDC estimated that the half life of dioxin or the amount of time it would take for dioxin to decay and become harmless was around one year.

As such, even though the CDC had managed to gather a very specific list of all of the areas potentially contaminated with dioxin and then recommended for the contaminated soil to be quickly removed and disposed of. Missouri officials, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency or the EPA, decided that a cleanup wasn't actually necessary since the spray dioxin would have already been pretty much harmless by then.

The EPA just felt that this would be a waste of time and resources to have to deal with. And they also severely underestimated just how devastating dioxin could be for humans. Little did they know, however, just how big of a mistake they were making. As it turns out, the real half life of dioxin is estimated to be between 7 to 11 years.

But by the time the EPA had finally realized this, it was already far too late. Another five years later, in 1979, a former tobacco employee tipped EPA officials off to a dioxin whisperers site on a farm near Verona. Apparently, the package had not only hired IPC to help them dispose of their dioxin waste, they had also just been secretly burying some of it in open fields around Verona and had been dumping it into the local Spring River as well, since these were by far the cheapest options when the EPA investigated this lead.

They indeed discovered a total of 90 drums of dioxin waste buried under a farm. But when the EPA had this waste tested, as well as the soil surrounding it in water from the Spring River to their incredible shock, despite the fact that these drums had been buried and dumped almost a decade ago, they still contained dioxin concentrations as high as 2000 parts per million.

Finally, realizing that they had been just completely wrong about the toxins, halfwit people at the EPA were horrified. For more than ten years, people in Missouri, especially the town of Times Beach, had just been casually living in these completely contaminated, completely uninhabitable areas. The health consequences were simply catastrophic to think about if the people weren't already dead. Immediately, the EPA began dedicating almost all their resources to the Missouri dioxin crisis.

Going back to test each of the potential contamination sites that had originally been on the CDC's list, just like they had been afraid of every area that they tested was just as toxic and just as concentrated in dioxin as it had been 11 years before. But as the EPA was still scrambling to get everything under control in 1982, some of their internal documents were suddenly leaked to the public.

These documents revealed 14 confirmed dioxin contaminated sites in over 40 possibly contaminated sites in the state of Missouri alone. One of these possibly contaminated sites was the town of Times Beach. For the residents of Times Beach, that information leak was the first time that they'd ever even heard of the word dioxin and the first time that they ever learned that they had potentially been living on poisoned soil for over ten years.

Of course, they were horrified and furious when EPA officials finally arrived in Times Beach that November and launch hazmat suits to take samples of the soil to confirm whether the town was still safe or not. The residents all watched honestly from inside their homes since flooding season was beginning soon. These EPA officials had to race to gather all the information they needed.

Luckily, they were able to do so just in time. Just a single day after the EPA left with their test samples, Times Beach was hit with the worst flood in its entire history. The entire town had to be evacuated. But as if that wasn't already tragedy enough for the residents of Times Beach, just as the flood waters finally began to recede and they would finally be allowed to go back to their homes, the EPA test results came back in to the residents disbelief and horror.

The concentrations of dioxin on the town's roads were as high as a hundred parts per billion, more than a hundred times greater than what is generally considered safe for humans. And the EPA not only recommended that their town be completely abandoned, they recommended that it be completely incinerated as well, due to the constant risk of flooding and the possible spread of contamination.

As a result, the residents of Tom's Beach were suddenly told to immediately leave everything behind and to evacuate from the town. Everything that everyone owned from their cars to their homes, to their money, to the very clothes on their backs, was contaminated and had to be given up. Because of this, many of these residents were now completely broke.

They didn't have a single item to their name and they didn't have anywhere to go either. It just seemed like one day everything had been perfectly normal. And the very next day, they had lost literally everything. And they also suddenly had to worry about potential health consequences for the rest of their lives. Many residents had already died of cancer, had gone blind, or had suffered from some other extreme physical illness or disability as a result of the dioxin contamination.

But even the residents who had been lucky and hadn't exhibited any symptoms so far weren't out of the clear at all. For the rest of every resident's life. Every time one of their children sneezed or developed a small rush or exhibited even the smallest abnormality, they would immediately begin worrying that it was because of the dioxin. It was a terrifying feeling for them to never know when the symptoms would finally start.

And since they were always expecting it, the stress and anxiety consumed some people's lives. The threat of dioxin was always in the back of everyone's mind, even years and decades after they had moved away from Times Beach. And it was absolutely horrible. Over the days and weeks following the EPA's evacuation recommendation, sometimes beach residents begin to move in with family members.

Some moved into government housing and some simply refused to leave and chose to stay in their homes and just risk the consequences. All of them, however, were completely furious and frustrated with the EPA, demanding to know why they had never been informed about the contamination. Earlier, when the EPA had known about its potential existence for over ten entire years, the residents also all demanded that the federal government step in to buy out all of the homes to provide them with fair compensation, since many of them now had nothing.

And several lawsuits also soon began being filed by the families that had already suffered from extreme illness, disability or death as a result of dioxin and as a result of the EPA's negligence, many of the residents of Times Beach also began to repeatedly attack, harass and sue the one man who they felt had been responsible for ruining all of their lives.

Russell Bliss. Since Russell had been the one who initially chose to mix dioxin into his oil. Many people felt that he had done so intentionally and placed the burden of all of the lives lost and all the homes destroyed on him. However, Russell himself has always stuck to his story, constantly maintaining his innocence, and that he had truly never known that what he was.

Spring was best. But although some residents believe him and have managed to forgive him, many have not and likely never will. After months and years of relentless protests and lobbying by the residents of Times Beach in 1983, the federal government finally announced that it would pay 33 million to totally buy out all 800 homes and 30 businesses in the town.

By 1985, all of the residents had finally been fully relocated, and an executive order was issued by Missouri's governor to this incorporated Times Beach. For good. For more than ten years, Times Beach was a ghost town, completely eerily empty and surrounded on all sides. By large, cautionary signs warning people about the potential contamination within people who drove by the area during this time often described it as feeling deeply unsettling and like being in the middle of a science fiction movie.

Eventually, however, the town was completely bulldozed, and in 1995, the EPA installed an incinerator on the site, finally decontaminating the soil, but also raising any less trees of times beach away forever. The entire cleanup of Times Beach was finally finished in 1987 and cost an estimated total of $200 million. Two years later, in 1999, the area was finally declared safe enough again to be reopened to the public as Route 66 State Park.

The only sign of the historic town that once stood in its place is a small plaque that sits tucked away in the park's visitor center. In the end, another Russell Bliss, nor any of the chemical companies involved, were ever found guilty of any criminal behavior. However, numerous lawsuits were ultimately settled, including a major one in 1993 that awarded all 2140 residents of Times Beach, with up to 2000 to $90000 each in compensation.

Despite this, though, many of the residents were still alive to this day, have suffered from health consequences their entire lives as a result of their exposure to dioxin. Many of the residents who are no longer alive have already passed away because of the illnesses that they receive from it. And many of the children of Times Beach residents have suffered greatly as well.

It's a deeply tragic story that still has an impact on people's lives to this very day. All we can hope for is that lessons have been learned and that a situation like this will never, ever happen again. Take care, guys, and I'll see you all next week.