Mining Incidents
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Florida

Florida has 3,438 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1892–2006, across 67 counties. MSHA's register carries 672 Florida mines with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps of Florida, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem, and every MSHA-registered mine with status Abandoned, by county. Each county page lists the named features and links every MSHA mine to its own record.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
3,438
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
672
67 counties with mapped features36 features carry a name0 prospect pitsmaps published 1892–2006 2 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
By countyranked by mapped USGS features
County USGS features Openings OSMRE problems MSHA abandoned
Polk County
268 0 0 54
Escambia County
245 0 0 25
Marion County
202 0 0 44
Hillsborough County
178 0 0 20
Okaloosa County
169 0 0 9
Hamilton County
153 0 0 3
Lake County
135 0 0 8
Miami-Dade County
129 0 0 63
Santa Rosa County
127 0 0 9
Citrus County
122 0 0 12
Walton County
113 0 0 12
Hernando County
93 0 0 9
Clay County
91 0 0 3
Volusia County
82 0 0 3
Palm Beach County
65 0 0 27
Broward County
64 0 0 63
Duval County
64 0 0 6
Gadsden County
61 0 0 11
Alachua County
60 0 0 2
Bay County
58 0 0 7
Putnam County
53 0 0 5
Jackson County
52 0 0 10
Orange County
51 0 0 13
Pinellas County
48 0 0 0
Sumter County
47 0 0 11
Lee County
42 0 0 22
Pasco County
39 0 0 4
Charlotte County
36 0 0 22
Levy County
35 0 0 4
Washington County
33 0 0 4
Liberty County
33 0 0 1
Sarasota County
32 0 0 13
Manatee County
32 0 0 6
Leon County
30 0 0 3
Calhoun County
26 0 0 2
Gilchrist County
25 0 0 0
Suwannee County
24 0 0 6
Gulf County
22 0 0 1
Seminole County
21 0 0 2
Wakulla County
20 0 0 1
Highlands County
17 0 0 1
Holmes County
17 0 0 1
St. Johns County
17 0 0 1
Bradford County
17 0 0 0
Brevard County
16 0 0 20
Taylor County
16 0 0 6
Columbia County
15 0 0 2
Nassau County
15 0 0 1
Collier County
14 0 0 21
Dixie County
11 0 0 3
DeSoto County
9 0 0 9
Hendry County
9 0 0 8
Osceola County
9 0 0 2
Jefferson County
9 0 0 1
Martin County
8 0 0 6
Hardee County
8 0 0 1
Franklin County
8 0 0 0
Madison County
8 0 0 0
St. Lucie County
6 0 0 15
Lafayette County
6 0 0 5
Baker County
6 0 0 0
Flagler County
5 0 0 0
Indian River County
4 0 0 11
Monroe County
3 0 0 21
Glades County
2 0 0 5
Union County
2 0 0 0
Okeechobee County
1 0 0 12
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    918 26.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    2,277 66.2%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    240 7.0%
  4. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    3 0.1%
By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Disturbed Surface 469
Sand Pit 394
Clay Pit 333
Sand Pit 286
Quarry 272
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 257
Borrow Pit 205
Strip Mine 202
Clay Pit 192
Tailings - Pond 185
Quarry 130
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 88
Open Pit Mine 76
Borrow Pit 69
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 59
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 40
Gravel Pit 40
Gravel Pit 36
Tailings - Undifferentiated 22
Mine Dump 14
Mine 10
Tailings - Undifferentiated 8
Mine Dump 8
Shell Pit 8
Open Pit Mine 8
Marl Pit 7
Marl Pit 4
Tipple 3
Strip Mine 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 3
Settling Pond 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Tailings - Pond 1
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, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine, and several problems make one problem area (PAD), which is the unit a state program counts and reports; the public extract can also hold more problem areas than a state's live inventory, because areas since merged or ruled ineligible stay in the published file, so a state figure that differs from this one is not a contradiction. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s; that is a regulatory status rather than a physical one, and it also holds operations merely between jobs, portable crushers above all, which is why over a thousand mines carrying it have been inspected in the last two years. The three overlap and are never added together. Counties are assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method and every source are 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.