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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Webster County, Iowa

Webster County, Iowa has 70 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1923–1979. MSHA's register carries 24 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Webster 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)
70
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1923–1979 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
    10 14.3%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    60 85.7%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned24 on register
  1. Black Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welp & Mc Carten Inc · MSHA ID 1301039
    Abandoned
  2. Casey Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welp & Mc Carten Inc · MSHA ID 1301042
    Abandoned
  3. Croft Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Croft Ready Mix · MSHA ID 1300667
    Abandoned
  4. Croft Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fort Dodge Asphalt Co · MSHA ID 1301917
    Abandoned
  5. DODGER ROCK & GRAVEL COMPANY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dodger Rock & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1302209
    Abandoned
  6. Elkhorn/Otho Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Georgia-Pacific Gypsum LLC · MSHA ID 1300437
    Abandoned
  7. Elkhorn/Otho Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Reilly Construction Co., Inc. · MSHA ID 1302414
    Abandoned
  8. Fort Dodge Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Gold Bond Building Products · MSHA ID 1300436
    Abandoned
  9. Gilpin Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welp & Mc Carten Inc · MSHA ID 1301041
    Abandoned
  10. Gypsum AG Supply
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gypsum AG Supply · MSHA ID 1302253
    Abandoned
  11. Hudson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301169
    Abandoned
  12. Iles Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301170
    Abandoned
  13. Lehigh Clay Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dickey Company · MSHA ID 1300355
    Abandoned
  14. Limestone Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwest Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1300147
    Abandoned
  15. MG Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Doyle Aggregates LLC · MSHA ID 1302518
    Abandoned
  16. Mitchell Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Welp & Mc Carten Inc · MSHA ID 1300446
    Abandoned
  17. NORTHWEST MATERIALS, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwest Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1301396
    Abandoned
  18. Old Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · United States Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 1301717
    Abandoned
  19. Portable #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Reilly Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1302200
    Abandoned
  20. Portable Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mobile Crushing & Recycling Inc · MSHA ID 1302390
    Abandoned
  21. Portable Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Reilly Construction Co. Inc. · MSHA ID 1302264
    Abandoned
  22. Portable Wash Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Coots Materials Company Inc · MSHA ID 1302374
    Abandoned
  23. S04 Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Calcium Products Inc. · MSHA ID 1302252
    Abandoned
  24. Wrede Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301933
    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 24
Quarry 14
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 10
Clay Pit 8
Gravel Pit 7
Quarry 6
Sand 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.