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Abandoned mines › Illinois
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Livingston County, Illinois

Livingston County, Illinois has 45 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1925–2001, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 24 problems in the county, 5 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 22 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Livingston 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)
45
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
5
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits15 quadrangle maps, published 1925–2001 24 OSMRE problems, 19 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
    17 24.6%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    9 13.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    31 44.9%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    8 11.6%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 1.4%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    3 4.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems24 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Cardiff Coal Company No.2 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Cardiff Coal Company No.2 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Coal Run Coal Company P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Coal Run Coal Company P3 Slump Reclamation Pending
Dieken Site P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Dieken Site P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Fairbury West Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Fairbury West Mine P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Fairbury West Mine P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Hawthorne Ave. Shaft P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Hayward Pit P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Il - Livingston - Fea P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
K, W, & B Group P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Katchewan Park P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Lawton Pit P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Marshall-simpkins P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Moon Creek Openings P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Richards Pit Subsidence P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Streator Clay Mnfg. Co. P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Streator Clay Mnfg. Co. P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Sullivan Pit P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Timm Pit P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
West Cornell Mine Opening P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Wilson Pit P1 Vertical Openings 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 Abandoned22 on register
  1. 8101 Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-America Sand & Gravel Co. · MSHA ID 1103297
    Abandoned
  2. Diller Tile Company Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Diller Tile Company Inc · MSHA ID 1100474
    Abandoned
  3. Fairbury Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1100059
    Abandoned
  4. Fairbury Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · VCNA Prairie LLC · MSHA ID 1102903
    Abandoned
  5. Hanley Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanley Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1102845
    Abandoned
  6. Ifft Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · VCNA Prairie LLC · MSHA ID 1103233
    Abandoned
  7. INDIAN CREEK MATERIALS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Indian Creek Materials · MSHA ID 1102821
    Abandoned
  8. Macklin Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Macklin Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 1102812
    Abandoned
  9. Mc Dowell Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1102807
    Abandoned
  10. McDowell Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Valley View Industries, Inc. · MSHA ID 1100030
    Abandoned
  11. Meister Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanley Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1102809
    Abandoned
  12. PONTIAC PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1100166
    Abandoned
  13. Pontiac Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Valley View Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1103072
    Abandoned
  14. PRAIRIE MATERIALS YARD 89
    Surface metal/non-metal · Prairie Materials Sales Inc · MSHA ID 1103030
    Abandoned
  15. Shale Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Valley View Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1101235
    Abandoned
  16. Shale Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · VCNA Prairie LLC · MSHA ID 1103112
    Abandoned
  17. STREATOR BRICK SHALE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Streator Brick Inc · MSHA ID 1100478
    Abandoned
  18. WESTON QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1100291
    Abandoned
  19. Weston Stone Div Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pontiac Stone Company · MSHA ID 1101132
    Abandoned
  20. Yard 97-Pontiac
    Surface metal/non-metal · Prairie Material Sales, Inc.-Aggregate Division · MSHA ID 1102836
    Abandoned
  21. Yard 98 - Fairbury
    Surface metal/non-metal · VCNA Prairie, Inc · MSHA ID 1102972
    Abandoned
  22. Ziller Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanley Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1102808
    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
Quarry 20
P1 Vertical Openings 8
P2 Vertical Openings 8
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Gravel Pit 4
Mine Dump 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
P3 Gobs 3
Clay Pit 3
Quarry - Limestone 1
Clay Pit 1
Quarry 1
P1 Subsidence 1
P3 Slump 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
Gravel Pit 1
Mine Shaft 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.