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Abandoned mines › Kansas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ellsworth County, Kansas

Ellsworth County, Kansas has 54 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1956–1979, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). MSHA's register carries 12 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ellsworth 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
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
12
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1956–1979 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
    1 1.9%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    43 79.6%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    8 14.8%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 3.7%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned12 on register
  1. Acme Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Acme Brick Company · MSHA ID 1401018
    Abandoned
  2. BATES SAND PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · White Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401028
    Abandoned
  3. Boggs Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Acme Brick Company · MSHA ID 1400685
    Abandoned
  4. Holmoka Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Truhlars Ready Mix Concrete · MSHA ID 1400548
    Abandoned
  5. Kanopolis Crushed Rock Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kanopolis Crushed Rock Inc · MSHA ID 1401534
    Abandoned
  6. Mc Eroy Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kenny'S Construction · MSHA ID 1401158
    Abandoned
  7. North Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · White's Construction Company LLC · MSHA ID 1401790
    Abandoned
  8. Portable #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · White's Construction Company, LLC · MSHA ID 1401791
    Abandoned
  9. Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hi-Plains Sand, Inc. · MSHA ID 1401740
    Abandoned
  10. Remely Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Acme Building Brands · MSHA ID 1400686
    Abandoned
  11. Sparks Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Acme Brick Company · MSHA ID 1400687
    Abandoned
  12. VONDRA CLAY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Acme Brick Company · MSHA ID 1400211
    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
Disturbed Surface - Pit 25
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 15
Sand Pit 4
Sand Pit 2
Mine Dump 2
Disturbed Surface 2
Clay Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Mine Shaft 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.