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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Scott County, Iowa

Scott County, Iowa has 24 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1949–1991, including 4 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). MSHA's register carries 14 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Scott 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)
24
Mine openings
4
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1949–1991 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    4 16.7%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    7 29.2%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    13 54.2%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned14 on register
  1. Cargill Salt Terminal Sandusky Cons
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cargill Salt · MSHA ID 1301721
    Abandoned
  2. Davenport Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Cement · MSHA ID 1301078
    Abandoned
  3. Floating Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Builders Sand & Cement Company · MSHA ID 1300655
    Abandoned
  4. Forty-six Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Linwood Mining and Minerals Corporation · MSHA ID 1302464
    Abandoned
  5. LeClaire Inv. Port. Wash Plt #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · LeClaire Investments · MSHA ID 1300231
    Abandoned
  6. Mc Causland Quarry #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wecc Corp · MSHA ID 1302000
    Abandoned
  7. Mc Causland Sand Plant #44
    Surface metal/non-metal · Moline Consumers Company · MSHA ID 1301625
    Abandoned
  8. McCarthy U/G Shop
    Underground metal/non-metal · McCarthy Improvement Company Inc · MSHA ID 1302211
    Abandoned
  9. New Liberty Plant (MC-41)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Riverstone Group, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302489
    Abandoned
  10. Olson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Argo Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1301713
    Abandoned
  11. PORTABLE DRILL DEPT 533
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wendling Quarries, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302069
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Wash Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Moline Consumers Company · MSHA ID 1300614
    Abandoned
  13. Princeton Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Le Claire Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1301264
    Abandoned
  14. Witt Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · R E A Company Limited · MSHA ID 1301773
    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 6
Adit 4
Disturbed Surface - Pit 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Gravel Pit 2
Gravel Pit 2
Sand Pit 2
Quarry 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.