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Abandoned mines › Arkansas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Calhoun County, Arkansas

Calhoun County, Arkansas has 190 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1962–1985. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Calhoun 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)
190
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1962–1985 1 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    14 7.4%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    176 92.6%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned20 on register
  1. Benson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Turner Trucking Company · MSHA ID 0301360
    Abandoned
  2. Calhoun County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Paper Company · MSHA ID 0301201
    Abandoned
  3. Calhoun County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Calhoun County Road Department · MSHA ID 0301213
    Abandoned
  4. Calhoun County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arkansas State Highway Department · MSHA ID 0301325
    Abandoned
  5. Cram Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · St Francis Material Company · MSHA ID 0300415
    Abandoned
  6. Hampton Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jet Asphalt & Rock Company Inc · MSHA ID 0300401
    Abandoned
  7. HARRELL PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Meridian Aggregates Company Lp · MSHA ID 0301495
    Abandoned
  8. International Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jet Asphalt & Rock Company Inc · MSHA ID 0300743
    Abandoned
  9. Loveless Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Turner Trucking Company · MSHA ID 0301455
    Abandoned
  10. Mike Blann Gravel Co. Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mike Blann Gravel Co., Inc. · MSHA ID 0301863
    Abandoned
  11. NORTH PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Meridian · MSHA ID 0301649
    Abandoned
  12. Oliver Or Ritchey
    Surface metal/non-metal · Turner Trucking Company · MSHA ID 0301498
    Abandoned
  13. Phillips
    Surface metal/non-metal · Estes Construction Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 0301566
    Abandoned
  14. Plant & Pit No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Avant Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0300880
    Abandoned
  15. R M Courson Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · R M Courson Inc · MSHA ID 0301847
    Abandoned
  16. S A M Co
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southern Arkansas Materials Corp · MSHA ID 0300744
    Abandoned
  17. SAMCO (SOUTHERN ARK MATLS CORP)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southern Arkansas Materials Corp · MSHA ID 0301457
    Abandoned
  18. South Hampton Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boorhem-Fields Inc · MSHA ID 0301578
    Abandoned
  19. Sparta Mine
    Surface coal · Shell Oil Company · MSHA ID 0301424
    Abandoned and Sealed
  20. Wylie Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arkansas Gravel Co Inc · MSHA ID 0301886
    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 108
Gravel Pit 61
Disturbed Surface 14
Sand and Gravel Pit 3
Sand Pit 2
Sand Pit 2
Other counties in ArkansasAll 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.