How many abandoned mines are in Yell County, Arkansas?

Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Yell County, Arkansas

Yell County, Arkansas has 50 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1963–1993. MSHA's register carries 9 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Yell 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): 50
Mine openings: 0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed: 0
MSHA mines marked abandoned: 9

0 features carry a name0 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1963–1993 2 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed

What the features are

Mines and surface workings

labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings

1 2.0%
Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction

49 98.0%

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned9 on register

Beryl Quarry
Surface metal/non-metal · E C Rowlett Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0300915

Abandoned 1980-09-15
Bradley-Stephens Mines
Surface coal · Aearth Development Inc · MSHA ID 0301401

Abandoned and Sealed 1983-10-14
Dardanelle Pit
Surface metal/non-metal · Robinson Inc · MSHA ID 0301199

Abandoned 1994-07-25
Hunt Gravel Pit
Surface metal/non-metal · Freshour Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0301460

Abandoned 1979-11-19
Reasons Mine No 1
Surface coal · Reasons Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0301532

Abandoned and Sealed 1983-07-22
South Yell Country Gravel Co
Surface metal/non-metal · South Yell County Gravel Co · MSHA ID 0301968

Abandoned 2023-12-11
Standard Gravel Pit And Plant
Surface metal/non-metal · Standard Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0301453

Abandoned 1980-02-06
T & M Construction Company
Surface metal/non-metal · T & M Construction Company · MSHA ID 0301646

Abandoned 1990-09-15
Waldron Pit
Surface metal/non-metal · Toney's Dozer Service, Inc · MSHA ID 0302000

Abandoned 2012-10-25

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	Class	Source	Features
Gravel Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	21
Shale Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	16
Quarry	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	4
Gravel Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	3
Shale Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	2
Open Pit Mine	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (point)	1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	1
Clay Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	1
Sand Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	1

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

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.