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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Dubuque County, Iowa

Dubuque County, Iowa has 88 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1955–1980. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 1 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 31 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Dubuque 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)
88
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
31
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1955–1980 1 OSMRE problems, 1 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
    22 24.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    66 74.2%
  3. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    1 1.1%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems1 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Dubuque Emergency P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed

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 Abandoned31 on register
  1. Asbury Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1300008
    Abandoned
  2. Asbury Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Becker & Becker Stone Co Inc · MSHA ID 1302229
    Abandoned
  3. Beecher Sand Ltd
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1301973
    Abandoned
  4. Bernard Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301527
    Abandoned
  5. Browns Bottom Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · River City Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1300021
    Abandoned
  6. Cascade-Locher Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Horsfield Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302415
    Abandoned
  7. Dyersville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kuhlman Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301528
    Abandoned
  8. Gansen Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · River City Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1301987
    Abandoned
  9. Gassman Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301994
    Abandoned
  10. Hartbecke Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · River City Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1301988
    Abandoned
  11. Hermsen Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301835
    Abandoned
  12. Kemp Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · River City Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1301869
    Abandoned
  13. Kennedy Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301993
    Abandoned
  14. Klein-Richardsville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301525
    Abandoned
  15. Koos Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Donald Koos Owner · MSHA ID 1300077
    Abandoned
  16. Mar Jo Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1300096
    Abandoned
  17. Mc Dermott Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · River City Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1302002
    Abandoned
  18. Menards Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · TschiggFrie Excavating Co. · MSHA ID 1302286
    Abandoned
  19. MOLO PORTABLE #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Molo Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1302148
    Abandoned
  20. Plant #42
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Div/Mathy Construction · MSHA ID 4703041
    Abandoned
  21. PORTABLE #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1302164
    Abandoned
  22. PORTABLE #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1302182
    Abandoned
  23. Reiter Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dyersville Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 1301781
    Abandoned
  24. River Dredging
    Surface metal/non-metal · Aggregate Materials Company · MSHA ID 1300729
    Abandoned
  25. Rose Spur Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dubuque Stone Prodcts Co-Div/Spahn & Rose Lumber · MSHA ID 1300022
    Abandoned
  26. Sauser Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dyersville Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 1301735
    Abandoned
  27. Schlichte Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1300465
    Abandoned
  28. Thole Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301960
    Abandoned
  29. TSCHIGGFRIE PORTABLE #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1302059
    Abandoned
  30. TSCHIGGFRIE PORTABLE #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1302185
    Abandoned
  31. TSCHIGGFRIE PORTABLE #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tschiggfrie Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1301992
    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
Quarry 42
Quarry 10
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 9
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 9
Gravel Pit 8
Disturbed Surface - Pit 4
Sand Pit 3
Gravel Pit 3
P1 Subsidence 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.