THIS DAY IN HISTORY
DECEMBER 23,1982
Chemical contamination prompts evacuation of Missouri town
On December 23, 1982, the Missouri Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) inform residents of Times Beach, Missouri that their town was contaminated when the chemical dioxin was sprayed on its unpaved roads, and that the town will have to be evacuated and demolished. By February, the federal and state governments had spent $36 million to buy every house in town except one (its owners, lifelong residents of Times Beach, refused to sell). In 1985, the city was officially disincorporated.

Times Beach was founded in 1925 as a part of a newspaper promotion: A 6-month subscription to The St. Louis Times plus an extra $67.50 bought a 20-by-100–foot lot along an unsettled stretch of the Meremec River. The town never became the booming resort that the newspaper had intended; instead, it evolved into a lower-middle–class hamlet of about 2,000 people. It was located just off Route 66, a two-lane highway that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles and was once was one of the major routes across the American Southwest.