How many abandoned mines are in DeSoto County, Florida?

Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in DeSoto County, Florida

DeSoto County, Florida has 9 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1957–1987. 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 DeSoto 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): 9
Mine openings: 0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed: 0
MSHA mines marked abandoned: 9

0 features carry a name0 prospect pits4 quadrangle maps, published 1957–1987 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed

What the features are

Mines and surface workings

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

7 77.8%
Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction

2 22.2%

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned9 on register

2 X 4 Mine
Surface metal/non-metal · L I Davis Excavation · MSHA ID 0801075

Abandoned 1988-04-10
2 X 4 RANCH PIT
Surface metal/non-metal · John Oldham & Son Inc · MSHA ID 0801011

Abandoned 1984-03-27
County Shell Pit
Surface metal/non-metal · De Soto County Public Works · MSHA ID 0801022

Abandoned 1992-09-01
D L's Land Clearing & Shell Inc
Surface metal/non-metal · D L's Land Clearing & Shell Inc · MSHA ID 0801195

Abandoned 2006-01-01
DAVIS PIT
Surface metal/non-metal · WASHINGTON LOOP LLC · MSHA ID 0801382

Abandoned 2011-06-03
De Soto Sand and Shell
Surface metal/non-metal · Patco Contractors · MSHA ID 0801332

Abandoned 2010-05-06
GHC Construction Inc
Surface metal/non-metal · GHC Construction Inc · MSHA ID 0801019

Abandoned 2004-04-01
S & R SHELL PIT
Surface metal/non-metal · S & R Excavating Of Desoto · MSHA ID 0801098

Abandoned 1999-05-21
TRIPLE DDD MINE
Surface metal/non-metal · L I Davis Excavating · MSHA ID 0801099

Abandoned 2003-02-14

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
Disturbed Surface	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (area)	5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (area)	2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	2

Other counties in FloridaAll 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.