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Abandoned mines › Iowa
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Woodbury County, Iowa

Woodbury County, Iowa has 50 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1962–1993. MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Woodbury 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)
50
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1962–1993 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
    6 12.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    44 88.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned18 on register
  1. Ballou Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ballou Brick Company · MSHA ID 1300336
    Abandoned
  2. Becker Portable Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Midwest LLC · MSHA ID 1302223
    Abandoned
  3. Becker Wash Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Midwest LLC · MSHA ID 2101389
    Abandoned
  4. Cargill Salt Terminal
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cargill Inc · MSHA ID 1301716
    Abandoned
  5. Cock Burn Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301842
    Abandoned
  6. Correctionville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Woodbury County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301811
    Abandoned
  7. Correctionville Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301139
    Abandoned
  8. FLEWELLING SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Flewelling Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1300768
    Abandoned
  9. Knife River Portable Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 1302152
    Abandoned
  10. Knife River Portable Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Midwest LLC · MSHA ID 1302184
    Abandoned
  11. Knife River Screen Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Midwest LLC · MSHA ID 1302288
    Abandoned
  12. Knife River Stripping Crew
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Midwest · MSHA ID 1302361
    Abandoned
  13. Knife River Wash Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Midwest LLC · MSHA ID 1302289
    Abandoned
  14. Ned Castle Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weaver Construction Company · MSHA ID 1301793
    Abandoned
  15. Persinger Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Persinger Sand & Gravel Co · MSHA ID 1301795
    Abandoned
  16. Railroad Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Woodbury County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301810
    Abandoned
  17. SERGEANT BLUFF PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Howard Construction Company · MSHA ID 1302219
    Abandoned
  18. Woodbury County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Woodbury County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1301812
    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
Gravel Pit 8
Disturbed Surface - Pit 6
Clay Pit 4
Clay Pit 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 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.