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Abandoned mines › Alabama
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Elmore County, Alabama

Elmore County, Alabama has 125 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1958–1987, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 1 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 23 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Elmore 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)
125
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
23
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1958–1987 1 OSMRE problems, 1 reclaimed 0 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 0.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    5 4.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    119 94.4%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.8%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems1 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Millbrook P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 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 Abandoned23 on register
  1. #1 DREDGE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Millbrook Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0101893
    Abandoned
  2. Bear Creek No 3 Mine
    Underground coal · Florence Port Inc · MSHA ID 0100885
    Abandoned
  3. Beaver Run Sand & Gravel LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Beaver Run Sand & Gravel LLC · MSHA ID 0103464
    Abandoned
  4. D & J Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · D & J Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0102139
    Abandoned
  5. Deatsville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wiregrass Construction Co., Inc. · MSHA ID 0103333
    Abandoned
  6. Elmore Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southern Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101114
    Abandoned
  7. Gober Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jenkins Brick Company · MSHA ID 0100111
    Abandoned
  8. Ground Works Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · GW Materials LLC · MSHA ID 0103579
    Abandoned
  9. Hillabee Pit No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hillabee Brick Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101718
    Abandoned
  10. Johnson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · R & S Materials Inc · MSHA ID 0100677
    Abandoned
  11. Law Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smart Rock LLC. · MSHA ID 0103642
    Abandoned
  12. MAGNUM PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 0103121
    Abandoned
  13. NICHOLS PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 0102239
    Abandoned
  14. Pecan Grove Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Area Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0103169
    Abandoned
  15. Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · AB Materials · MSHA ID 0103512
    Abandoned
  16. PIT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ingram'S Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0100576
    Abandoned
  17. Pit No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & C Materials Inc · MSHA ID 0102051
    Abandoned
  18. River Farms Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jenkins Brick Company · MSHA ID 0103214
    Abandoned
  19. Russell Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Russell Lands Inc · MSHA ID 0103338
    Abandoned
  20. Sam Antley
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sam Antley · MSHA ID 0103534
    Abandoned
  21. Sharpe No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sharpe Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102387
    Abandoned
  22. Wetumpka Gravel LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wetumpka Gravel, LLC · MSHA ID 0103435
    Abandoned
  23. Wetumpka Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Little River Materials · MSHA ID 0103558
    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
Gravel Pit 76
Gravel Pit 23
Sand Pit 5
Clay Pit 4
Sand Pit 4
Disturbed Surface - Pit 3
Clay Pit 3
Disturbed Surface 2
Quarry 2
Adit 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
Quarry 1
Borrow Pit 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.