Abandoned mines in Mahaska County, Iowa

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   5 1.0%
2. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   63 12.8%
3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   34 6.9%
4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   93 18.9%
5. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   2 0.4%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   295 60.0%

…and 245 more problems not listed here.

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.

1. Geery Construction Co Quarry #2

   Surface metal/non-metal · Geery Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301930
   Abandoned 1985-05-21
2. Ico Osko #4 Strip

   Surface coal · I C O Corp · MSHA ID 1300372
   Abandoned 1979-11-05
3. Iowa Coal Project Demonstration Mine No

   Surface coal · Iowa State University · MSHA ID 1301683
   Abandoned 1977-12-08
4. Iowa Fuel & Minerals Quarry #1

   Surface metal/non-metal · Iowa Fuel & Minerals · MSHA ID 1302160
   Abandoned 1989-08-14
5. Lost Creek Strip

   Surface coal · Lost Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 1300368
   Abandoned 1974-01-10
6. Mich No 1 Strip

   Surface coal · Mich Coal Company · MSHA ID 1300371
   Abandoned 1973-10-24
7. Mine #5

   Surface coal · Mich Coal Company · MSHA ID 1301684
   Abandoned 1979-10-01
8. Mine #6

   Surface coal · Mich Coal Company · MSHA ID 1301855
   Abandoned 1984-06-07
9. Oskaloosa Quarry

   Surface metal/non-metal · Kaser Corp · MSHA ID 1300067
   Abandoned 1979-12-14
10. SKYLINE CONSTRUCTION, INC./G-71

    Surface metal/non-metal · Skyline Construction Inc/G-71 Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1301422
    Abandoned 1997-07-23
11. South River Limestone

    Surface metal/non-metal · South River Limestone Company · MSHA ID 1301947
    Abandoned 1986-06-26
12. Star Strip

    Surface coal · Star Coal Company · MSHA ID 1300373
    Abandoned 1978-08-01
13. Tracy Sand Pit And Plant

    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaser Corp · MSHA ID 1301023
    Abandoned 1979-02-12

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Marion County 136
• Linn County 107
• Clayton County 95
• Appanoose County 93
• Delaware County 91
• Clay County 89
• Dubuque County 88
• Boone County 87
• Cerro Gordo County 83
• Black Hawk County 82
• Polk County 79
• Winneshiek County 74

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.