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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Sioux County, Iowa

Sioux County, Iowa has 66 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1962–1985. MSHA's register carries 22 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Sioux 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)
66
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1962–1985 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    66 100.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned22 on register
  1. Boyer Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyer Ready Mix Sand & Rock Inc · MSHA ID 1300687
    Abandoned
  2. CE- Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cleveringa Excavating LLC · MSHA ID 1302478
    Abandoned
  3. Chatsworth Or Van Woudenberg Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sioux County Highway Dept · MSHA ID 1301882
    Abandoned
  4. Chatsworth Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301074
    Abandoned
  5. Groth Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301095
    Abandoned
  6. Hymans Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1300915
    Abandoned
  7. Johnson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301543
    Abandoned
  8. Kraai-Vander Esch Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301557
    Abandoned
  9. LGEX-Perm-Larrabee
    Surface metal/non-metal · L.G. Everist, Inc. · MSHA ID 1302241
    Abandoned
  10. Osterkamp Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301075
    Abandoned
  11. PCP #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cleveringa Excavating LLC · MSHA ID 1302419
    Abandoned
  12. Portable #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Keith Hagedorn Construction · MSHA ID 1302391
    Abandoned
  13. Portable #365
    Surface metal/non-metal · Higman Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1302400
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Crushing Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1302082
    Abandoned
  15. Portable Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyer Ready Mix Sand & Rock Inc · MSHA ID 1302162
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Wash Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1302083
    Abandoned
  17. Schumacher Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301542
    Abandoned
  18. Sioux River Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Plymouth County Highway Department-Ia · MSHA ID 1301852
    Abandoned
  19. Solberg Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301910
    Abandoned
  20. Van Gelder-Hiemstra Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hymans Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1301941
    Abandoned
  21. Van Wyk Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cleveringa Excavating LLC · MSHA ID 1302363
    Abandoned
  22. Von Arb Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301975
    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 33
Gravel Pit 29
Sand Pit 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 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.