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Abandoned mines › Indiana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Owen County, Indiana

Owen County, Indiana has 71 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1908–1998, including 11 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 1 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 14 problems in the county, 4 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 14 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Owen 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)
71
Mine openings
11
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
4
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
1 features carry a name0 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1908–1998 14 OSMRE problems, 10 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
    20 23.5%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    45 52.9%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    11 12.9%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 5.9%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 1.2%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    3 3.5%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Porter Cave Adit

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 problems14 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Andrew P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Andrew Subsidence P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Botkin Highwalls P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Botkin Highwalls P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Bush And Road Cemetery P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Bush Cemetery P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Darling P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Darling P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Darling Subsidence P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
In - Owen - Fea P1 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Inman Subsidence P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Patricksburg P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Rowland P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Weathermax Subsidence 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 Abandoned14 on register
  1. Bush Mine
    Surface coal · J H & L Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1201791
    Abandoned
  2. Coal City Pit
    Surface coal · Northern Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1202144
    Abandoned
  3. Gosport Stone
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Materials Inc. · MSHA ID 1201997
    Abandoned
  4. Haviland Bros
    Surface coal · Haviland Brothers · MSHA ID 1201433
    Abandoned
  5. Hendricks No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Hesco Inc · MSHA ID 1201765
    Abandoned
  6. Lick Creek
    Surface coal · United Minerals Company Llc · MSHA ID 1202195
    Abandoned
  7. Owen Valley Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1200139
    Abandoned
  8. P-Burg Strip Mine
    Surface coal · P-Burg Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1201424
    Abandoned
  9. Pit Apollo No 1
    Surface coal · Schopmeyer Mining · MSHA ID 1201764
    Abandoned
  10. Pond Creek Mine
    Surface coal · Little Sandy Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1202098
    Abandoned
  11. Pond Creek No 2 Mine
    Surface coal · Triad Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1202284
    Abandoned
  12. Spencer Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1200663
    Abandoned
  13. Spencer Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1200003
    Abandoned
  14. Wcb Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bybee Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1202030
    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 27
Strip Mine 13
Adit 6
Mine Shaft 5
P1 Vertical Openings 5
Quarry 4
P2 Vertical Openings 3
Quarry - Rock 3
Mine Dump 3
Coal Mine 3
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 2
Quarry 2
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
Sand Pit 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
P1 Dangerous Slides 1
Tipple 1
P2 Portals 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.