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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Linn County, Iowa

Linn County, Iowa has 107 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1965–1994. 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 Linn 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)
107
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
31
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1965–1994 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
    8 7.5%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    99 92.5%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned31 on register
  1. Alice Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301370
    Abandoned
  2. B L Anderson Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301369
    Abandoned
  3. Betenbender Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alpha Crushed Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1300177
    Abandoned
  4. Bluegrass Sand Pit & Plant Or Bluegrass
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluegrass Interprise · MSHA ID 1301824
    Abandoned
  5. Bowser Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1300178
    Abandoned
  6. CEDAR RAPIDS SAND
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1300724
    Abandoned
  7. Cedar Rapids Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301403
    Abandoned
  8. Cedar Rapids Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1300717
    Abandoned
  9. Central City Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1300677
    Abandoned
  10. Coggon Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301667
    Abandoned
  11. Cook Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Paul Niemann Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301968
    Abandoned
  12. East Marion Sand Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alpha Crushed Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1300651
    Abandoned
  13. Finn Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alpha Crushed Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1300403
    Abandoned
  14. Ivanhoe Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1300647
    Abandoned
  15. Linn Stone Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Linn Stone Company · MSHA ID 1301579
    Abandoned
  16. Lisbon Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301368
    Abandoned
  17. Morgan Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301400
    Abandoned
  18. Ortmann Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1301580
    Abandoned
  19. Park Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alpha Crushed Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1301277
    Abandoned
  20. Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1302060
    Abandoned
  21. Plower Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1300179
    Abandoned
  22. Robins Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1300003
    Abandoned
  23. Robins Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1302067
    Abandoned
  24. Sand & Gravel Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1302064
    Abandoned
  25. Site #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 1301963
    Abandoned
  26. Stripping Crew
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1302066
    Abandoned
  27. Sweeting Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alpha Crushed Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1300180
    Abandoned
  28. The Power Plant Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Croell, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302243
    Abandoned
  29. Troy Mills Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301404
    Abandoned
  30. Troy Mills Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B L Anderson Inc · MSHA ID 1301938
    Abandoned
  31. Wash Plant #8
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1302068
    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 37
Gravel Pit 28
Quarry 18
Disturbed Surface - Pit 7
Gravel Pit 7
Sand Pit 6
Sand Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Open Pit Mine or 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.