Abandoned mines in Fulton County, Illinois

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   84 25.8%
2. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   119 36.6%
3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   11 3.4%
4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   31 9.5%
5. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   15 4.6%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   64 19.7%
7. Other

   symbols outside the classes above
   1 0.3%

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.

…and 44 more problems not listed here.

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.

1. Black Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Hillyer Inc · MSHA ID 1103103
   Abandoned 2006-12-01
2. Buckheart Mine #17

   Facility coal · Oros and Busch Application Technologies, Inc · MSHA ID 1102975
   Abandoned 2020-08-05
3. Buckheart No 17

   Facility coal · Springfield Coal Company · MSHA ID 1100594
   Abandoned 1995-03-14
4. Central Shop

   Facility coal · Midland Coal Company · MSHA ID 1101827
   Abandoned 1984-08-06
5. Coal Inc Crf #1

   Facility coal · Coal Inc · MSHA ID 1102813
   Abandoned 2002-02-13
6. Downin Pit And Mill

   Surface metal/non-metal · Lawrence Downin Owner · MSHA ID 1102322
   Abandoned 1978-12-10
7. Duck Creek Sand & Gravel, Inc.

   Surface metal/non-metal · Duck Creek Sand & Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 1102996
   Abandoned 2015-02-10
8. DUCK ISLAND SAND & GRAVEL CO.

   Surface metal/non-metal · Duck Island Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1101093
   Abandoned 1996-11-01
9. Elm No 2 Strip

   Surface coal · Midland Coal Co-Div American Smelting & Refining · MSHA ID 1100592
   Abandoned 1972-11-06
10. Liverpool Sand

    Surface metal/non-metal · Galena Road Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1102943
    Abandoned 1996-08-29
11. Norris Mine Strip

    Surface coal · Consolidation Coal Company · MSHA ID 1100804
    Abandoned 1981-12-01
12. Portable Wash Plant

    Surface metal/non-metal · Tennessee Sand · MSHA ID 1102957
    Abandoned 2013-03-19
13. Rapatee

    Surface coal · Mid State Coal Company · MSHA ID 1102389
    Abandoned 1997-10-21
14. SandHill Materials

    Surface metal/non-metal · SandHill Materials · MSHA ID 1103286
    Abandoned 2023-10-16
15. Spoon River Pit And Mill

    Surface metal/non-metal · Spoon River Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1102561
    Abandoned 1979-03-16
16. Sun Spot

    Surface coal · Amax Coal Company · MSHA ID 1100591
    Abandoned 1984-01-24
17. Valley Mine No 1-Strip

    Surface coal · Valley Mining Company · MSHA ID 1102407
    Abandoned 1979-10-01

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Will County 220
• LaSalle County 192
• McHenry County 191
• Winnebago County 187
• Kane County 184
• St. Clair County 136
• Hardin County 136
• Stephenson County 127
• Williamson County 124
• Peoria County 122
• Cook County 114
• Jo Daviess County 109

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.