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Abandoned mines › Illinois
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in McLean County, Illinois

McLean County, Illinois has 54 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1951–1998. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 3 problems in the county, 1 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering McLean 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)
54
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
1
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1951–1998 3 OSMRE problems, 2 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
    3 5.3%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    12 21.1%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    42 73.7%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems3 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
East Colfax Mine P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
East Colfax Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Stewart Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending

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 Abandoned18 on register
  1. Baugh Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Elbert Baugh Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 1101098
    Abandoned
  2. Bud Hall-Pit 96
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1102990
    Abandoned
  3. CARRI SCHARF MATERIALS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carri Scharf Materials · MSHA ID 1103013
    Abandoned
  4. Gesell Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stark Materials Company Inc · MSHA ID 1103001
    Abandoned
  5. Hall Pit No 74
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1102013
    Abandoned
  6. Heidelberg Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Heidelberg Gravel Company · MSHA ID 1101164
    Abandoned
  7. HEIDELBERG PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · MISCH EXCAVATING LLC · MSHA ID 1103199
    Abandoned
  8. HEYWORTH GRAVEL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stark Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1101220
    Abandoned
  9. K & R Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · K & R Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1103105
    Abandoned
  10. MIKEL 175
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1102014
    Abandoned
  11. Rowe Pit #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1102745
    Abandoned
  12. Rowe Pit No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1102006
    Abandoned
  13. Ryan Pit No 39
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1101627
    Abandoned
  14. Sholty Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stark Materials Company, Inc. · MSHA ID 1103000
    Abandoned
  15. Snyder-Hall Pit #100
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction Company-Div/R A Cullinan & Son · MSHA ID 1102869
    Abandoned
  16. Stark Rettick Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stark Materials Company, Inc. · MSHA ID 1102893
    Abandoned
  17. Stringtown Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carri Scharf Materials · MSHA ID 1103272
    Abandoned
  18. TRENT GRAVEL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stark Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1103009
    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 27
Gravel Pit 14
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 8
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
P2 Vertical Openings 2
P1 Vertical Openings 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.