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Abandoned mines › Indiana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Gibson County, Indiana

Gibson County, Indiana has 15 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1959–1988, including 2 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 1 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 23 problems in the county, 6 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 24 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Gibson 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)
15
Mine openings
2
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
6
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
1 features carry a name0 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1959–1988 23 OSMRE problems, 17 reclaimed 3 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
    7 18.4%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    13 34.2%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    7 18.4%
  4. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    3 7.9%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    8 21.1%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Somerville Mine Mine Shaft

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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems23 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Brogan Energy - Cassidy P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Francisco P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Francisco P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Francisco P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Pending
Francisco P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Ft Branch Smokestack P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
General Fuel #2 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
General Fuel #2 P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
General Fuel #2 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
General Fuel Air Shaft P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
In - Gibson - Fea P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Princeton Methane Gas P2 Gases: Hazardous/Explosive Reclamation Pending
Saxton #1 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Saxton #1 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Somerville #1 P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Somerville #1 P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Somerville #1 P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Completed
Somerville #1 P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Somerville #1 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Somerville #1 P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Somerville Seep P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Somerville Seep P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Tom Ruppel Opening 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 Abandoned24 on register
  1. Bruce Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Brogan Energy Engineering Corp · MSHA ID 1201797
    Abandoned
  2. Columbia Mine
    Surface coal · Vigo Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1202127
    Abandoned
  3. Discovery
    Facility coal · United Minerals Co LLC · MSHA ID 1202296
    Abandoned
  4. Discovery Auger
    Surface coal · Black Hawk Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1202235
    Abandoned
  5. Enterprise Mine
    Surface coal · Peabody Midwest Mining, LLC · MSHA ID 1201965
    Abandoned
  6. Francisco
    Facility coal · Gibson County Synfuel LLC. · MSHA ID 1202317
    Abandoned
  7. Francisco Auger
    Surface coal · Black Hawk Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1202224
    Abandoned
  8. Francisco Mine
    Underground coal · Consolidation Coal Company · MSHA ID 1201604
    Abandoned and Sealed
  9. Gibson County Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1201657
    Abandoned
  10. Gibson County Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gibson County Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1202342
    Abandoned
  11. Gibson Mine
    Facility coal · Gibson County Coal LLC · MSHA ID 1202215
    Abandoned and Sealed
  12. Hazleton Mine
    Surface coal · White River Coal, Inc. · MSHA ID 1202324
    Abandoned and Sealed
  13. Hurricane Creek
    Surface coal · Triad Mining LLC · MSHA ID 1202325
    Abandoned
  14. Kings Ug Mine
    Underground coal · Kings Station Coal Corp · MSHA ID 1200323
    Abandoned
  15. Oakhill Dock
    Facility coal · E & M Coal Inc · MSHA ID 1201669
    Abandoned
  16. Princeton
    Facility coal · Gibson County Synfuel, LLC · MSHA ID 1202369
    Abandoned
  17. Ross Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Magnolia Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 1201639
    Abandoned
  18. Sky Point Pit
    Surface coal · Four Rivers Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1201415
    Abandoned
  19. Somerville
    Facility coal · United Minerals Company LLC · MSHA ID 1202207
    Abandoned
  20. Somerville
    Facility coal · Gibson County Synfuel LLC. · MSHA ID 1202359
    Abandoned
  21. Somerville Mine-Strip
    Surface coal · Mifflin Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 1201608
    Abandoned
  22. Somerville South Synfuel Plant
    Facility coal · Lakeside Synfuel, LLC · MSHA ID 1202389
    Abandoned
  23. Three River'S Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Three River'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1200689
    Abandoned
  24. Venturi Pit #16
    Surface coal · Energy Supply Inc · MSHA ID 1201953
    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
Strip Mine 6
Disturbed Surface 4
P3 Gobs 4
P3 Equipment Facility 3
P2 Vertical Openings 3
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
Mine Shaft 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
P1 Vertical Openings 2
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P1 Subsidence 1
P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
P2 Gases: Hazardous/Explosive 1
P3 Water Problems 1
P2 Dangerous Impoundments 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Other counties in IndianaAll 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.