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Abandoned mines › Alabama
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Etowah County, Alabama

Etowah County, Alabama has 85 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1947–1986, including 2 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 15 problems in the county, 10 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 25 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Etowah 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)
85
Mine openings
2
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
10
MSHA mines marked abandoned
25
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits17 quadrangle maps, published 1947–1986 15 OSMRE problems, 5 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
    8 8.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    64 64.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    18 18.0%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 3.0%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 1.0%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    6 6.0%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems15 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Altoona P1 Portals In Reclamation
Altoona P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Altoona P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Pending
Altoona P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Altoona P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Altoona P3 Slump Reclamation Pending
Altoona P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Altoona, Sw P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Altoona, Sw P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Altoona, Sw P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Pending
Altoona, Sw P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Black Creek Church P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Black Creek Church P1 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
Gadsden, North P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Horton Gap P1 Portals 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 Abandoned25 on register
  1. Ballplay
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sagna Inc · MSHA ID 0102168
    Abandoned
  2. Black Creek #2
    Surface coal · Cherokee Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102178
    Abandoned
  3. Black Creek No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Cherokee Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101857
    Abandoned
  4. Cherokee No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Cherokee Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101654
    Abandoned
  5. Cole Mine
    Surface coal · East Texas Energy Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102436
    Abandoned
  6. Collinsville Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blount Springs Materials Co Inc · MSHA ID 0103199
    Abandoned
  7. Happy Hill
    Surface metal/non-metal · The Rock Shop · MSHA ID 0103465
    Abandoned
  8. Highland No 1
    Surface coal · Cherokee Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102160
    Abandoned
  9. Howelton Pit
    Surface coal · Alaco Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101998
    Abandoned
  10. Jesse W Shotts No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Sparrow Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101884
    Abandoned
  11. L W L Company Inc Strip
    Surface coal · L W L Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101825
    Abandoned
  12. Lacks Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Thomas Duckett Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102206
    Abandoned
  13. Mccormick Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Larry Terry Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 0102321
    Abandoned
  14. No 1 Mine
    Surface coal · Dugout Valley Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101847
    Abandoned
  15. No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · North Star Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101445
    Abandoned
  16. No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Sand Mountain Mineral Company · MSHA ID 0101649
    Abandoned
  17. No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · W & D Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101653
    Abandoned
  18. Osborn Pit No I
    Surface metal/non-metal · Osborn Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0101841
    Abandoned
  19. Pit No 1
    Surface coal · J A H Mining Company · MSHA ID 0101991
    Abandoned
  20. Pit No 2 Strip
    Surface coal · Cherokee Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101573
    Abandoned
  21. Quality Stone
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quality Construction · MSHA ID 0103440
    Abandoned
  22. Robbins Strip Mine
    Surface coal · Robbins Coal Company · MSHA ID 0100421
    Abandoned
  23. SIMS PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Cartney Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0102535
    Abandoned
  24. Southside Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Etowah County Commission · MSHA ID 0101505
    Abandoned
  25. Whorton Bend Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Baker Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0101503
    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
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 19
Disturbed Surface - Pit 16
Disturbed Surface 13
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 9
Gravel Pit 7
Gravel Pit 5
Strip Mine 5
Quarry 3
P1 Portals 3
Adit 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Quarry 2
P3 Spoil Area 2
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
P3 Slump 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
Tipple 1
P2 Portals 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Gobs 1
P1 Hazardous Water Bodies 1
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
P2 Clogged Streams 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.