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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Dallas County, Iowa

Dallas County, Iowa has 68 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1911–1982. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 8 problems in the county, 8 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 13 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Dallas 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)
68
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
8
MSHA mines marked abandoned
13
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits13 quadrangle maps, published 1911–1982 8 OSMRE problems, 0 reclaimed 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
    6 7.9%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    59 77.6%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    8 10.5%
  4. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    3 3.9%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems8 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Highbridge P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Scandia P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Scandia P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Scandia P3 High Wall Reclamation Pending
Scandia P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Strange P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Pending
Strange P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Strange P3 Slump Reclamation Pending

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned13 on register
  1. Adel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301952
    Abandoned
  2. Bear Creek Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gendler Stone Products Company Inc · MSHA ID 1300034
    Abandoned
  3. Clay Pit No 6
    Surface metal/non-metal · United Brick & Tile Co Of Iowa · MSHA ID 1300353
    Abandoned
  4. Commerce Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Materials · MSHA ID 1300653
    Abandoned
  5. Dudley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301932
    Abandoned
  6. Hunter Pit Or Dallas County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dallas County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301742
    Abandoned
  7. I-80 Qry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gendler Stone Products Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301986
    Abandoned
  8. PERRY SAND & GRAVEL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pound Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1300739
    Abandoned
  9. Redfield Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Glen-Gery Corporation · MSHA ID 1300897
    Abandoned
  10. Redfield Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Can-Tex Industries · MSHA ID 1300335
    Abandoned
  11. Ross Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301948
    Abandoned
  12. Snyder Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dallas County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301723
    Abandoned
  13. Van Meter Plant & Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Materials · MSHA ID 1302001
    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 35
Gravel Pit 14
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Clay Pit 4
Mine Dump 3
Clay Pit 3
P3 Spoil Area 2
P3 Gobs 1
Sand Pit 1
Open Pit Mine 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
Quarry 1
P3 Slump 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
P3 High Wall 1
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 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.