Abandoned mines in Crittenden County, Kentucky
Crittenden County, Kentucky has 289 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1921–1958, including 87 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 70 prospect pits; 79 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 9 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.
Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Crittenden 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)
- 289
- Mine openings
- 87
- OSMRE problems unreclaimed
- 0
- MSHA mines marked abandoned
- 9
-
87 30.1%Mine openingsshafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
-
70 24.2%Prospect pits and trenchesshallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
-
115 39.8%Mines and surface workingslabelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
-
9 3.1%Quarries, gravel and borrow pitsconstruction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
-
7 2.4%Dumps, tailings, spoil and gobwhat mining left above ground
-
1 0.3%Mills, tipples and facilitiesprocessing plants and hazardous structures
| Name on map | Feature |
|---|---|
| Ada Florence Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Atlas Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Bebout Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Ben Belt Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Ben Belt Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Big Four Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Blue Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Butler Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Butler Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Butler Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Clement Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Columbia Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Commodore Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Corn Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Crystal Mines | Open Pit Mine |
| Davenport Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Dell-High Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Eagle-Babb Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Eva Tanguay Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Franklin Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Franklin Mines | Open Pit Mine |
| Franklin Mines | Open Pit Mine |
| Glendale Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Gray Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Haffaw Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Hickory Cane Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Hodge Mine | Open Pit Mine area |
| Holly Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Horse Lot Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Jim Belt Mine | Mine Shaft |
| John Belt Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Keystone Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Keystone Mine and Fluorite Flotation Mill | Mine Shaft |
| King Mine | Mine Shaft |
| KK Mines | Mine Shaft |
| KK Mines | Mine Shaft |
| KK Mines | Mine Shaft |
| KK Mines | Mine Shaft |
| La Rue Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Mary Belle Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Mary Belle Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Mary Belle Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Mary Belle Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Mary Helen Mine | Mine Dump area |
| Mary Helen Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Mary Helen Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Matterds Prospects | Prospect Pit |
| Matterds Prospects | Prospect Pit |
| Matterds Prospects | Prospect Pit |
| Matterds Prospects | Prospect Pit |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Mine Shaft |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Open Pit Mine |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Open Pit Mine |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Open Pit Mine |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Open Pit Mine |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Prospect Pit |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Prospect Pit |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Prospect Pit |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Prospect Pit |
| Memphis Prospect Area | Prospect Pit |
| Miller Mines | Mine Shaft |
| Miller Mines | Open Pit Mine |
| Nine Acre Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Old Jim Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Penn Salt Fluorite Mill | Mill Site |
| Pigmy Mines | Open Pit Mine |
| Red Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Red Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Red Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Reiter Mine | Mine |
| Reiter Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Riley Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Riley Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Silver Star Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| SIlver Star Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Spring Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Sumner Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Tabb No 1 Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Wilson Quarry | Quarry area |
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.
-
Babb BarnesAbandoned 1991-03-21Facility metal/non-metal · Triple M Mining Corp · MSHA ID 1505162
-
Babb-BarnesAbandoned 1979-08-15Underground metal/non-metal · Frontier Spar Corp · MSHA ID 1505161
-
Conceptual Stone Inc.Abandoned 2012-11-19Surface metal/non-metal · Conceptual Stone Inc. · MSHA ID 1519398
-
Crittenden No 1Abandoned 1983-09-12Surface coal · Jim Smith Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 1513215
-
Lafayette Wash PlantAbandoned 1991-03-21Facility metal/non-metal · Triple M Mining Corp · MSHA ID 1516961
-
Marion Mine & MillAbandoned 2011-11-08Underground metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1500003
-
Marion Quarry - CrittendenAbandoned 2021-04-15Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc. · MSHA ID 1519629
-
Paddy's Bluff Crushed StoneAbandoned 2014-01-01Surface metal/non-metal · Grogan Properties, LLC · MSHA ID 1519723
-
Piney CreekAbandoned 1986-10-20Surface coal · T K Jessup Inc · MSHA ID 1514210
Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.
| Feature type | Features |
|---|---|
| Mine Shaft | 85 |
| Prospect Pit | 69 |
| Open Pit Mine | 59 |
| Open Pit Mine or Quarry | 50 |
| Quarry | 5 |
| Open Pit Mine | 4 |
| Mine Dump | 4 |
| Quarry | 3 |
| Tailings - Undifferentiated | 3 |
| Adit | 2 |
| Mine | 2 |
| Prospect Pit | 1 |
| Mill Site | 1 |
| Gravel Pit | 1 |
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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).
-
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.