Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › Illinois
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cook County, Illinois

Cook County, Illinois has 114 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1928–1998; 4 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 34 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cook 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)
114
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
34
4 features carry a name0 prospect pits30 quadrangle maps, published 1928–1998 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
    18 15.8%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    93 81.6%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 2.6%
Named features on the maps4 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Sanitary Dump Fill Open Pit Mine or Quarry area
Sanitary Dump Fill Open Pit Mine or Quarry area
Slag Dump Slag Pile
Soil Pit Open Pit Mine area

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned34 on register
  1. A & L Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lo Bue Inc · MSHA ID 1102494
    Abandoned
  2. Barge Slip Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · R P Donohoe Co Inc · MSHA ID 1100053
    Abandoned
  3. Bartlett Pit & Washing Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Accorsi Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1101052
    Abandoned
  4. Beverly Materials-East Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Beverly Materials LLC · MSHA ID 1102022
    Abandoned
  5. Chicago Distribution Center
    Facility metal/non-metal · Morron Salt Co · MSHA ID 1102504
    Abandoned
  6. East Riverdale Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Beverly Materials LLC · MSHA ID 1102887
    Abandoned
  7. Elgin Sand & Gravel Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Elgin Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1102789
    Abandoned
  8. Federal Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Material Service · MSHA ID 1100068
    Abandoned
  9. Gifford Central
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials, Inc · MSHA ID 1103264
    Abandoned
  10. Gifford East-South
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 1103125
    Abandoned
  11. HAMMOND PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chicago Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1101074
    Abandoned
  12. Kurtz Jaw Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 1103123
    Abandoned
  13. LAKE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102906
    Abandoned
  14. Lyons
    Surface metal/non-metal · Reliable Materials Lyons LLC · MSHA ID 1103168
    Abandoned
  15. Lyons Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Material Service Corp · MSHA ID 1101567
    Abandoned
  16. McCook Lime Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Vulcan Constr. Materials, L.P. · MSHA ID 1100227
    Abandoned
  17. MCCOOK QUARRY TUNNEL PROJECT
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Mine Services Inc · MSHA ID 1103004
    Abandoned
  18. McCook Yards
    Surface metal/non-metal · Walsh Construction · MSHA ID 1103220
    Abandoned
  19. Midwest Screening Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Akzo Salt Inc · MSHA ID 1102493
    Abandoned
  20. PLANT #4 - Northgate-Thayer
    Surface metal/non-metal · Illinois Mining Corporation · MSHA ID 1103051
    Abandoned
  21. PLANT NO. 1
    Facility metal/non-metal · Re-Agg Material Corp · MSHA ID 1102934
    Abandoned
  22. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwest Material Corp · MSHA ID 1102913
    Abandoned
  23. PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1102945
    Abandoned
  24. Portable Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 1102980
    Abandoned
  25. Portable Plant #One
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bartlett Road Materials · MSHA ID 1102924
    Abandoned
  26. Portable Screening Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluff City Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1103265
    Abandoned
  27. South Chicago Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Carmeuse Lime and Stone, Inc. · MSHA ID 1102161
    Abandoned
  28. THORNTON PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Marblehead Lime Company · MSHA ID 1100788
    Abandoned
  29. Thornton Underground
    Underground metal/non-metal · Hanson Material Service · MSHA ID 1102719
    Abandoned
  30. Thornton Underground Mine #1
    Underground metal/non-metal · Material Service Corp · MSHA ID 1102619
    Abandoned
  31. Torrence Screening Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cargill Inc · MSHA ID 1102463
    Abandoned
  32. Vulcan Starter Trench
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kenny Construction Company · MSHA ID 1103135
    Abandoned
  33. West Bartlett Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Elmhurst-Chicago Stone · MSHA ID 1102308
    Abandoned
  34. Yard R Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Brick Company · MSHA ID 1100466
    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 26
Quarry 20
Clay Pit 16
Gravel Pit 13
Disturbed Surface 8
Sand Pit 7
Disturbed Surface - Pit 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
Quarry 4
Sand Pit 3
Tailings - Pond 2
Borrow Pit 1
Clay Pit 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Slag Pile 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 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.