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Abandoned mines › Kansas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Bourbon County, Kansas

Bourbon County, Kansas has 148 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1939–1991. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 24 problems in the county, 18 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Bourbon 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)
148
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
18
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits20 quadrangle maps, published 1939–1991 24 OSMRE problems, 6 reclaimed 3 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    104 60.5%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    44 25.6%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    9 5.2%
  4. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    15 8.7%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems24 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
267 Terr P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
267 Terr P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Branding Iron P2 Surface Burning Reclamation Pending
Branding Iron P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Center School P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Center School P2 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Center School P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Clarksburg School P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Clarksburg School P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Degruson P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Garland P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Garland P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Garland North West P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Garland North West P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Ks - Bourbon - Fea P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Ks000605 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Ks000605 P3 High Wall In Reclamation
Ks000605 P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Kunstel Mine Fire P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
M.a. Rutherford P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
M.a. Rutherford P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Walnut Creek P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Walnut Creek P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Walnut Creek P3 Spoil Area 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 Abandoned19 on register
  1. Bradbury Coal
    Surface coal · Bradbury Coal Company · MSHA ID 1401216
    Abandoned
  2. Bronson Quarry South
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bandera Stone, Inc. · MSHA ID 1401846
    Abandoned
  3. Cleaver Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Adam Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401443
    Abandoned
  4. Cullor No 4 Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401237
    Abandoned
  5. CULLOR PORTABLE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ash Grove Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 1401460
    Abandoned
  6. Cullor Quarry & Mill No 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401279
    Abandoned
  7. Cullor Quarry #10
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401249
    Abandoned
  8. Cullor Quarry #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401280
    Abandoned
  9. Drywood
    Surface coal · Phoenix Mining Company, Inc. · MSHA ID 1401703
    Abandoned
  10. Fort Scott
    Surface coal · Bills Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401116
    Abandoned and Sealed
  11. Fulton
    Surface coal · Bills Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401230
    Abandoned and Sealed
  12. Garland Mine
    Surface coal · Phoenix Mining Company · MSHA ID 1401626
    Abandoned
  13. Mine No 1
    Surface coal · Pat'S Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401262
    Abandoned and Sealed
  14. Plant 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nelson Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 1401597
    Abandoned
  15. Plant No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Inc · MSHA ID 1401461
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Plant #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cornejo & Sons LLC · MSHA ID 1401648
    Abandoned
  17. Quarry And Plant No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1400066
    Abandoned
  18. Redfield Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Adam Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401110
    Abandoned
  19. South Fort Scott Quarry #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401342
    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 96
Quarry 27
Quarry 14
P3 Spoil Area 9
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 8
P1 Surface Burning 4
Strip Mine 4
Disturbed Surface 2
Gravel Pit 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
P3 High Wall 1
P2 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P2 Surface Burning 1
Gravel Pit 1
Other counties in KansasAll 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.