Abandoned mines in Hardin County, Illinois

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   78 51.7%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   6 4.0%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   42 27.8%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   10 6.6%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   9 6.0%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   3 2.0%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   3 2.0%

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.

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. Annabel Lee Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1102780
   Abandoned 1996-02-27
2. Core Drills

   Surface metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1102620
   Abandoned 1982-05-21
3. Denton Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1102667
   Abandoned 1995-04-14
4. Granusol, Inc.

   Facility metal/non-metal · Granusol, Inc. · MSHA ID 1100876
   Abandoned 2015-03-21
5. Hardin County Plant #2

   Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1100050
   Abandoned 2004-04-22
6. HARDIN COUNTY-PLANT #1

   Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1100184
   Abandoned 2001-08-13
7. Hm Shaft Or Hm Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1101603
   Abandoned 1983-04-21
8. Jader Dock

   Facility coal · Jader Fuel Company Inc · MSHA ID 1102542
   Abandoned 1986-03-26
9. Knight Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1101795
   Abandoned 1981-11-18
10. Knight Shop

    Facility metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1102077
    Abandoned 1996-02-27
11. M F Oxford Number 7

    Underground metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1101610
    Abandoned 1980-09-30
12. Minerva No 1 H M Plant

    Facility metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1102364
    Abandoned 1989-07-26
13. Minerva No 1 Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1100791
    Abandoned 1996-02-27
14. RIVER PORTABLE #01

    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1103052
    Abandoned 2002-07-18
15. ROCK DUST PRODUCTS @ CAVE IN ROC

    Facility metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1102799
    Abandoned 2002-07-18
16. ROSICLARE MILL

    Facility metal/non-metal · Ozark-Mahoning Company · MSHA ID 1101922
    Abandoned 1997-02-20
17. Shetlerville No 1

    Surface metal/non-metal · Barter Enterprises · MSHA ID 1102762
    Abandoned 1985-12-13
18. Spivey Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Inverness Mining Company · MSHA ID 1101764
    Abandoned 1983-02-09

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
• Fulton County 131
• 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.