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Abandoned mines › Alabama
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cherokee County, Alabama

Cherokee County, Alabama has 66 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1966–1986, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 26 problems in the county, 14 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 31 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cherokee County, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem in the county, and every MSHA-registered mine here with status Abandoned. Named features are listed below; unnamed ones are counted by type. Locations are deliberately not shown: this page says what abandoned workings are in the county, not where to find them. They are dangerous and should not be entered.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
66
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
14
MSHA mines marked abandoned
31
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits11 quadrangle maps, published 1966–1986 26 OSMRE problems, 12 reclaimed 1 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    1 1.1%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    20 21.7%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    44 47.8%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    9 9.8%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 1.1%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    17 18.5%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems26 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Chesterfield P3 High Wall Reclamation Pending
Chesterfield P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Pending
Chesterfield P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Completed
Chesterfield P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Desoto P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Desoto P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
Desoto P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Pending
Desoto P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Leesburg West P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Leesburg West P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Leesburg West P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Leesburg West P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Mt. Calvary Church P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Mt. Calvary Church P3 High Wall Reclamation Pending
Mt. Calvary Church P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Pending
Mt. Calvary Church P3 Slump In Reclamation
Mt. Calvary Church P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
New Bethel Church P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
New Bethel Church P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
New Bethel Church P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Sand Rock North P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Sand Rock North P3 Haul Road Reclamation Completed
Sand Rock North P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Sand Rock South P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Sand Rock South P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Sand Rock South P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned31 on register
  1. Big Star No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Big Star Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101555
    Abandoned
  2. Bobo Pit
    Surface coal · Eagle Contracting · MSHA ID 0102445
    Abandoned
  3. Brenda Strip No 1
    Surface coal · Brenda Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101415
    Abandoned
  4. Cash Mine
    Underground coal · Cash Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101496
    Abandoned
  5. Cash Mines No 1
    Underground coal · Cash Mines Inc · MSHA ID 0102318
    Abandoned
  6. Cedar Bluff Rock Products #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cedar Bluff Rock Products · MSHA ID 0103275
    Abandoned
  7. Cherokee County Pit #1
    Surface coal · Southern-Way Resources Inc · MSHA ID 0102461
    Abandoned
  8. Cherokee Mine
    Underground coal · Silloh Inc · MSHA ID 0102553
    Abandoned and Sealed
  9. Cherokee No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Howton Coal Co Inc · MSHA ID 0101406
    Abandoned
  10. Cherokee No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Tennessee Highlands Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101878
    Abandoned
  11. Cherokee Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Jet Coal Corp · MSHA ID 0102320
    Abandoned
  12. Cherokee Site
    Surface metal/non-metal · National Cement Company of Alabama · MSHA ID 0103312
    Abandoned
  13. Cloudland No 1
    Surface coal · S U M Development Corp · MSHA ID 0100970
    Abandoned
  14. Crow Strip
    Surface coal · Southeastern Metallurgical Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101758
    Abandoned
  15. Culpepper Chert Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Payne · MSHA ID 0103200
    Abandoned
  16. Dan No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Slimp Construction Company · MSHA ID 0101554
    Abandoned
  17. Ellis Brothers Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ellis Bros.Gin, Inc. · MSHA ID 0103280
    Abandoned
  18. Fort Norman Development No 2 Strip
    Surface coal · Fort Norman Development Inc · MSHA ID 0101773
    Abandoned
  19. Jamestown Tipple
    Facility coal · Lookout Mountain Coal Co · MSHA ID 0101535
    Abandoned
  20. Leesburg Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Covington Stone Company · MSHA ID 0102860
    Abandoned
  21. Louise No 1
    Underground coal · T M T Mining Company · MSHA ID 0101437
    Abandoned
  22. Lumpkin Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · General Shale Brick Inc · MSHA ID 0103415
    Abandoned
  23. No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · T M T Mining Company · MSHA ID 0101443
    Abandoned
  24. No 1 Pit
    Surface coal · Centre Mining Inc · MSHA ID 0101537
    Abandoned
  25. No 2 Strip
    Surface coal · Mineral Extractors Inc · MSHA ID 0101545
    Abandoned
  26. Pit #1
    Surface coal · Southern Empire Corp · MSHA ID 0102155
    Abandoned
  27. Pit No 2
    Surface coal · Yancey & Yancey Inc · MSHA ID 0101908
    Abandoned
  28. Sand Rock Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Cornelius & Rush Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101563
    Abandoned
  29. Sand Rock Pit No 4
    Surface coal · Cornelius & Rush Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101823
    Abandoned
  30. Sandrock Mine
    Surface coal · Hallmark & Son Coal Company · MSHA ID 0101971
    Abandoned
  31. Stimpson
    Surface coal · Alabama Georgia Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102315
    Abandoned

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Quarry 29
Disturbed Surface 18
Gravel Pit 8
P3 Spoil Area 8
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 5
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 4
Clay Pit 4
P3 Mine Opening 3
P3 High Wall 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Sand Pit 2
Clay Pit 1
P3 Slump 1
Tipple 1
P3 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P3 Gobs 1
Adit 1
P3 Haul Road 1
Other counties in AlabamaAll counties →
How to read these numbers

A USGS feature is a symbol on a historical topographic map, there when the map was surveyed; it may since have been sealed, reclaimed, built over or reopened as a working mine, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s. The three overlap and are never added together. The county is assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method is on the national page.

Sources
  1. USGS, Consolidated Prospect- and Mine-Related Features from 7.5- and 15-Minute Topographic Quadrangle Maps of the United States (USMIN)
    597,612 point and area features digitized from about 106,350 historical topographic maps published 1886–2006; public domain (CC0). A feature is a map symbol, not a field-verified site, and the map does not say whether it was still worked.
  2. USGS Fact Sheet 2025–3003, The Abandoned Mine Inventory of the United States
    States that as of 2025 there is no comprehensive national inventory of abandoned mine features, and that the detailed national database now being built will not be published.
  3. OSMRE, Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System (e-AMLIS), public Problems layer
    One row per abandoned mine land problem in a problem area, with its type, funding program and reclamation status; mostly coal mined before the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Coordinates are the problem area's.
  4. MSHA, Mines dataset (Mine Data Retrieval System)
    Every mine registered with MSHA since the 1970s; a mine reads Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed when its operator reported that status. Refreshed weekly.
  5. US Census Bureau, 2023 cartographic county boundaries (1:500,000)
    Each feature's county is assigned by its coordinates against these boundaries, not copied from the source file.
  6. GAO-20-238, Abandoned Hardrock Mines (March 2020)
    Federal agencies had identified at least 140,000 abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land and estimated more than 390,000 more not yet captured in their databases.
  7. Abandoned Hardrock Mine Reclamation (AHMR) Program, US Department of the Interior
    The program the USGS inventory is compiled for. Its appropriations and the 674,000 field-confirmed feature count on this page were provided by the program manager, Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, and are cited with permission (2026-09-08).
  8. IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report
    Page 48 carries the two figures this page leans on: USGS estimates 633,181 of the 725,690 mine features it recorded from historic topographic maps, 87 percent, are hardrock; and state and federal agencies have submitted more than 724,000 AML features to the national database being built, already more than the historic maps hold. Year-by-year AHMR funding is on page 35.