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Abandoned mines › Illinois
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Bureau County, Illinois

Bureau County, Illinois has 106 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1909–1983. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 35 problems in the county, 3 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 16 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Bureau 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)
106
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
3
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits17 quadrangle maps, published 1909–1983 35 OSMRE problems, 32 reclaimed 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
    6 4.3%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    32 22.7%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    70 49.6%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    12 8.5%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    4 2.8%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    17 12.1%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems35 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
1400 Ave Sheffield Highwalls P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Cherry Coal Company No.2 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Cherry Coal Company No.2 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Cherry Coal Company No.2 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Il. Third Vein C.c. P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Il. Third Vein C.c. P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Il. Third Vein C.c. P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Il. Third Vein C.c. P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Il. Third Vein C.c. P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Il. Third Vein C.c. P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Marquette Third Vein C.c. No. 1 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Marquette Third Vein C.c. No. 1 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Mautino State Fish & Wildlife Area P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Midland Electric Cc Sm-2 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Mineral Group 1 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Mineral Group 2 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Mineral Group 3 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Pre 87 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #2 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #2 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #4 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #4 P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #4 P3 Water Problems Reclamation Pending
Spring Valley #4 Shaft P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #5 P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #5 P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #5 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #5 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley #5 P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley C.c. #1 P1 Dangerous Slides In Reclamation
Spring Valley C.c. #1 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley C.c. #1 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley C.c. #1 P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley C.c.#3 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Spring Valley No.3 Embankment P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed

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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned16 on register
  1. 5#
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-Con Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102991
    Abandoned
  2. 54" ROLL CR. #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-Con Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102923
    Abandoned
  3. 6#
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-Con Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102992
    Abandoned
  4. 7#
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-Con Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102993
    Abandoned
  5. Bureau (Rawson) Plant #6
    Surface metal/non-metal · Moline Consumers Company · MSHA ID 1101174
    Abandoned
  6. BUREAU JCT. PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-West Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1101757
    Abandoned
  7. Depue White City Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · E J Cattani Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1102611
    Abandoned
  8. QUALITY SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quality Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1101107
    Abandoned
  9. Seaton Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · E J Cattani & Son Inc · MSHA ID 1102686
    Abandoned
  10. Seatonville Operations
    Surface metal/non-metal · Starline Construction · MSHA ID 1103201
    Abandoned
  11. Sitterly Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1101352
    Abandoned
  12. The Mennie Group LLC Bureau Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · The Mennie Group LLC Bureau Quarry · MSHA ID 1103187
    Abandoned
  13. WALNUT JR. TANDEM CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-Con Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102977
    Abandoned
  14. WALNUT PORTABLE 544E CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-Con Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102976
    Abandoned
  15. Western Sand & Gravel Co Portable #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1102927
    Abandoned
  16. Yucus Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yucus Gravel Pit · MSHA ID 1101251
    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 37
Gravel Pit 28
Strip Mine 26
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 6
P3 Gobs 4
Mine Dump 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
P2 Vertical Openings 4
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 3
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 3
P2 Clogged Streams 3
P1 Vertical Openings 2
P3 Water Problems 2
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Sand Pit 2
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 2
P3 Other 2
P1 Dangerous Slides 1
Clay Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Quarry 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
P1 Surface Burning 1
Other counties in IllinoisAll 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.