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Abandoned mines › Kansas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ford County, Kansas

Ford County, Kansas has 54 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1968–1984. 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 Ford 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
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1968–1984 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    2 3.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    52 96.3%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned19 on register
  1. Arkansas Gravel And Rock Pit #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arkansas Gravel & Rock · MSHA ID 1401409
    Abandoned
  2. B & R Sand Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & R Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1401151
    Abandoned
  3. Broce Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Broce Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 1401581
    Abandoned
  4. Bucklin Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Whitfield Sand & Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 1401336
    Abandoned
  5. Charles Davis Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gladden Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 1401388
    Abandoned
  6. Davis & Sons Sand Sales
    Surface metal/non-metal · Davis & Sons Sand Sales · MSHA ID 1400475
    Abandoned
  7. DC Aggregates, LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · DC Aggregates, LLC · MSHA ID 1401822
    Abandoned
  8. Dodge City Sand Co-Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dodge City Sand Company · MSHA ID 1401444
    Abandoned
  9. Dodge City Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · City Of Dodge City · MSHA ID 1401351
    Abandoned
  10. Ford County Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ford County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1401253
    Abandoned
  11. Gladden Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gladden Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 1400891
    Abandoned
  12. Green Acres Sand
    Surface metal/non-metal · Torrance Sand Pit · MSHA ID 1401410
    Abandoned
  13. Hardrock 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hardrock Sand & Gravel, LLC · MSHA ID 1401738
    Abandoned
  14. Hardrock 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hardrock Sand & Gravel LLC · MSHA ID 1401788
    Abandoned
  15. Killian Sand Co LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Killian Sand Co LLC · MSHA ID 1401766
    Abandoned
  16. Melvin Jones Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gladden Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 1401436
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Screening Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dodge City Sand Company · MSHA ID 1401400
    Abandoned
  18. SOUTHWEST CO
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southwest Sand Company · MSHA ID 1401419
    Abandoned
  19. Southwest Sand & Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southwest Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1401396
    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 23
Gravel Pit 16
Sand Pit 5
Caliche Pit 3
Sand Pit 3
Disturbed Surface 2
Caliche Pit 2
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.