Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cherokee County, Iowa

Cherokee County, Iowa has 40 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1969–1971. MSHA's register carries 16 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cherokee 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)
40
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1969–1971 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    40 100.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned16 on register
  1. Backhaus
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301891
    Abandoned
  2. Bainbridge Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cherokee County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301881
    Abandoned
  3. Boothby Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cherokee County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301878
    Abandoned
  4. Bugh Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cherokee County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301877
    Abandoned
  5. CHEROKEE NORTH
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Materials · MSHA ID 1301880
    Abandoned
  6. Cherokee Plant & Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Materials · MSHA ID 1300912
    Abandoned
  7. Clark Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301160
    Abandoned
  8. Killam Or Bainbridge Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cherokee County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301879
    Abandoned
  9. Montgomery Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301159
    Abandoned
  10. Nelson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301349
    Abandoned
  11. Portable #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cherokee County · MSHA ID 1302183
    Abandoned
  12. Portable #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schmillen Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1302292
    Abandoned
  13. Portable #360
    Surface metal/non-metal · Higman Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1301885
    Abandoned
  14. Portable #361
    Surface metal/non-metal · Higman Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1302325
    Abandoned
  15. S & N Service Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · S & N Service · MSHA ID 1300757
    Abandoned
  16. Walker Sand & Gravel Co-Miller Pit & Pla
    Surface metal/non-metal · Walker Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1301304
    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 30
Gravel Pit 10
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.