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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Hardin County, Iowa

Hardin County, Iowa has 48 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1975–1979. MSHA's register carries 27 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Hardin 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)
48
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
27
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1975–1979 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    48 100.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned27 on register
  1. Alden Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · American Cyanamid Company · MSHA ID 1301720
    Abandoned
  2. Alden Portable Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Materials Inc. · MSHA ID 1302031
    Abandoned
  3. Alden Shop
    Facility metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Materials · MSHA ID 1302320
    Abandoned
  4. Des Moines Yard
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1302038
    Abandoned
  5. Gehrke Quarries Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gehrke Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1301774
    Abandoned
  6. Gifford Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301724
    Abandoned
  7. Hackney Quarries Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hackney Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1302179
    Abandoned
  8. IMP, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Iowa Mineral Processing Inc · MSHA ID 1302205
    Abandoned
  9. Janssen Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301796
    Abandoned
  10. Nehring Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301536
    Abandoned
  11. PLANT #836
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1302030
    Abandoned
  12. PLANT #839 PORTABLE SAND 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates Of Iowa Inc · MSHA ID 1302207
    Abandoned
  13. PLANT #842
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1302035
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Rock Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montandon Construction Company · MSHA ID 1302054
    Abandoned
  15. Portable Rock Plant #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1302142
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Sand & Gravel Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1302034
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Sand & Gravel Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1302036
    Abandoned
  18. Portable Sand & Gravel Plant #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1302143
    Abandoned
  19. Portable Wash Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1302039
    Abandoned
  20. Portable Wash Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1302040
    Abandoned
  21. Riekena Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301949
    Abandoned
  22. Riekena Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Larry J Riekena · MSHA ID 1301979
    Abandoned
  23. Screen #1 McDowell & Sons Lime Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · McDowell & Sons Lime Company · MSHA ID 1302287
    Abandoned
  24. Stinson Excavating Company Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stinson Excavating Company · MSHA ID 1300699
    Abandoned
  25. Vanpatter Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301984
    Abandoned
  26. Welden Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welden Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 1300777
    Abandoned
  27. Wendall-Peterson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301794
    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 29
Quarry 10
Gravel Pit 8
Quarry 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.