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Abandoned mines › Illinois
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Christian County, Illinois

Christian County, Illinois has 25 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1923–1982. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 39 problems in the county, 8 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 4 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Christian 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)
25
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
8
MSHA mines marked abandoned
4
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1923–1982 39 OSMRE problems, 31 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
    5 7.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    8 12.5%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    11 17.2%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    11 17.2%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    5 7.8%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    24 37.5%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems39 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
1275 North Sag P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
1700 North Sags P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
American Arrow-peabody No.8 P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Assumption Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
County Road 5 P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
E1300 North Road Sag P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Emergency - Edinburg Shaft Collapse P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. # 58 P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. # 58 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #17 P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities In Reclamation
Peabody C.c. #17 P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Peabody C.c. #17 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #17 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #17 P3 Slurry Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #7 P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Pending
Peabody C.c. #7 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #7 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #7 P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #7 P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #7 P3 Water Problems Reclamation Pending
Peabody C.c. #8 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #8 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. #8 P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. No. 10 P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. No. 10 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. No. 10 P3 Other In Reclamation
Peabody C.c. No. 10 P3 Slump In Reclamation
Peabody C.c. No. 10 P3 Water Problems In Reclamation
Peabody C.c. No. 9 P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Peabody C.c. No. 9 P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
South Fork Township Road P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Springside Coal Co. P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Springside Coal Co. P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Springside Coal Co. P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Completed
Springside Coal Co. P3 Slurry Reclamation Completed
Taylorville Sewer Sag 2014 P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Taylorville Sewer Sag 2014 P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Wenneborg C.c. #3 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Wenneborg C.c. #3 P3 Mine Opening 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 Abandoned4 on register
  1. Eller'S Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eller'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1102793
    Abandoned
  2. Harvel Mine
    Underground coal · Shell Oil Company · MSHA ID 1102665
    Abandoned
  3. PANA QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1100549
    Abandoned
  4. RLF Pawnee Properties, LLC
    Facility coal · RLF Pawnee Properties, LLC · MSHA ID 1100585
    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
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Mine Dump 5
P2 Subsidence 5
P3 Gobs 5
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 4
Gravel Pit 4
P1 Subsidence 3
P3 Mine Opening 3
P2 Clogged Streams 3
P2 Vertical Openings 3
Gravel Pit 3
P3 Other 2
P3 Slurry 2
P3 Water Problems 2
P1 Vertical Openings 2
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
Mine 1
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 1
Disturbed Surface 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
Sand Pit 1
P3 Slump 1
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 1
Quarry - Limestone 1
Mine Dump 1
Quarry 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.