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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cerro Gordo County, Iowa

Cerro Gordo County, Iowa has 83 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1959–1972. MSHA's register carries 21 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cerro Gordo 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)
83
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1959–1972 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    1 1.2%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    79 95.2%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 3.6%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned21 on register
  1. Airport Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wright Materials · MSHA ID 1302483
    Abandoned
  2. Cimijotti Clayfield
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwestern States Portland Cement Company · MSHA ID 1300402
    Abandoned
  3. Clear Lake Sand
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1300628
    Abandoned
  4. Faught Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwestern States Portland Cement Company · MSHA ID 1301572
    Abandoned
  5. Forbes Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cerro Gordo County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301741
    Abandoned
  6. Glacial Till Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lehigh Portland Cement Company · MSHA ID 1301886
    Abandoned
  7. Kirk Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwestern States Portland Cement Company · MSHA ID 1301571
    Abandoned
  8. Mason City Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Can-Tex Industries · MSHA ID 1300346
    Abandoned
  9. Mason City Plant & Quarry
    Facility metal/non-metal · Holcim (US) Inc · MSHA ID 1300148
    Abandoned
  10. Mason City Sand
    Facility metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Corp · MSHA ID 1300776
    Abandoned
  11. Mason City Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welp & Mc Carten Inc · MSHA ID 1301569
    Abandoned
  12. NISS Excavation Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · NISS Excavation, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302501
    Abandoned
  13. Nora Sprngs Qry/Forbes Pit/Cerro Gordo C
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cerro Gordo County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301747
    Abandoned
  14. PORTABLE DRILL DEPT 510
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302494
    Abandoned
  15. Portland Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301420
    Abandoned
  16. Quimby Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1300224
    Abandoned
  17. Sherriff Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301354
    Abandoned
  18. Swaledale Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welp & Mc Carten Inc · MSHA ID 1301102
    Abandoned
  19. Ubben Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1300225
    Abandoned
  20. Wepking Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · P & M Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1300263
    Abandoned
  21. Willowbrook Shale Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwestern States Portland Cement Company · MSHA ID 1301121
    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 41
Gravel Pit 17
Quarry 11
Quarry 5
Clay Pit 4
Tailings - Undifferentiated 2
Open Pit Mine 1
Mine Dump 1
Clay Pit 1
Other counties in IowaAll 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.