Abandoned mines in Marion County, Iowa

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   7 0.9%
2. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   106 13.3%
3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   30 3.8%
4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   194 24.3%
5. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   1 0.1%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   461 57.7%

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

…and 513 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. American Coals Corp

   Surface coal · American Coals Corp · MSHA ID 1301754
   Abandoned 1994-10-15
2. BEAN-VISSER PIT

   Surface metal/non-metal · Pella Construction Company Ltd · MSHA ID 1301867
   Abandoned 2008-07-31
3. Beard No 2 Strip

   Surface coal · Beard Coal Co · MSHA ID 1300374
   Abandoned 1974-12-16
4. Dingeman Pit And Plant

   Surface metal/non-metal · Pella Construction Company Ltd · MSHA ID 1300738
   Abandoned 1979-05-25
5. Durham Quarry

   Surface metal/non-metal · Kaser Corp · MSHA ID 1300023
   Abandoned 1981-05-11
6. Harvey Plant

   Surface metal/non-metal · Kaser Corp · MSHA ID 1300834
   Abandoned 1985-04-30
7. Harvey Products, Inc.

   Surface metal/non-metal · Harvey Products, Inc. · MSHA ID 1301714
   Abandoned 2003-03-11
8. Jude Coal Inc

   Surface coal · Jude Coal Company · MSHA ID 1300375
   Abandoned 1994-06-13
9. Knoxville Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · NR Hamm Quarry LLC · MSHA ID 1302217
   Abandoned 2026-05-28
10. Mine Site No 2

    Surface coal · Mc Conville Coal Corp · MSHA ID 1301838
    Abandoned 1978-10-26
11. Otley Mine #1

    Surface coal · Otley Coal Company · MSHA ID 1301097
    Abandoned 1981-05-29
12. Portable Plant #1

    Surface metal/non-metal · Marion County Limestone Company Ltd · MSHA ID 1301953
    Abandoned 1993-09-16
13. Quality Number 1

    Surface coal · Quality Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301922
    Abandoned 1984-07-30
14. S & S QUARRIES

    Surface metal/non-metal · Bruening Rock Products Inc · MSHA ID 1300053
    Abandoned 2010-09-10
15. Shinn No 1 Strip

    Surface coal · Shinn Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301688
    Abandoned 1979-11-28
16. Shives Incorporated

    Surface metal/non-metal · Shives Inc · MSHA ID 1302161
    Abandoned 1990-04-30
17. Van Dusseldorp Sand & Gravel-Pella

    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaser Corp · MSHA ID 1300796
    Abandoned 1995-06-02
18. Weldon Strip

    Surface coal · Weldon Coal Company · MSHA ID 1300380
    Abandoned 1974-03-04

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

• Linn County 107
• Mahaska County 97
• 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.