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Abandoned mines › Kentucky
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Edmonson County, Kentucky

Edmonson County, Kentucky has 43 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1922–1994, including 11 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 1 prospect pits; 7 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 3 problems in the county, 2 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 17 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Edmonson 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)
43
Mine openings
11
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
2
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
7 features carry a name1 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1922–1994 3 OSMRE problems, 1 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
    11 23.9%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    1 2.2%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    11 23.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    19 41.3%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 6.5%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    1 2.2%
Named features on the maps7 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Asphalt Quarry Quarry
Asphalt Quarry Quarry
Asphalt Quarry Quarry
Asphalt Quarry Quarry
Asphalt Quarry Quarry
Asphalt Quarry Quarry
Kentucky Rock Asphalt Co Mine Open Pit Mine

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 problems3 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Bear Cr.-barber Drilling P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Shanty Hol. Strip P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Pending
Shanty Hol. Strip 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 Abandoned17 on register
  1. Barber Mine No 1
    Surface coal · Underground Recovery Inc · MSHA ID 1507463
    Abandoned
  2. Cardinal Stone Company Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cardinal Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 1500077
    Abandoned
  3. Commonwealth Stone Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Commonwealth Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1516467
    Abandoned
  4. Earth No 8
    Surface coal · Earth Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1514000
    Abandoned
  5. Freedom No 2
    Surface coal · H & H Coal Company · MSHA ID 1514103
    Abandoned
  6. Golden Sun
    Surface coal · Golden R Coal Company · MSHA ID 1514809
    Abandoned
  7. Green River Strip Mine No 1
    Surface coal · Green River Const Co Inc · MSHA ID 1508451
    Abandoned
  8. Indian Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hart County Stone · MSHA ID 1519137
    Abandoned
  9. M-D No 1
    Surface coal · M-D Coal · MSHA ID 1515453
    Abandoned
  10. Miller Strip
    Surface coal · Highway Safety Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1503988
    Abandoned
  11. Mine No 4 - Job No 5
    Surface coal · Pyramid Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1516158
    Abandoned
  12. Rocky Hill Tipple
    Facility coal · Ksa Resources Inc · MSHA ID 1510345
    Abandoned
  13. Roundtree
    Surface coal · Hooper Creek Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1514941
    Abandoned
  14. Shanty Hollow Mine
    Surface coal · Shanty Hollow Coal Company · MSHA ID 1508349
    Abandoned
  15. Strip Mine No 1
    Surface coal · Sullivan Mining Company · MSHA ID 1508479
    Abandoned
  16. U R I No 10 Mine
    Surface coal · Underground Recovery Inc · MSHA ID 1511572
    Abandoned
  17. U R I No 9 Surface
    Surface coal · Underground Recovery Inc · MSHA ID 1511013
    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
Quarry 14
Adit 11
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Strip Mine 4
Quarry 3
Gravel Pit 2
P3 Spoil Area 2
Prospect Pit 1
Mine Dump 1
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 1
Strip Mine 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Other counties in KentuckyAll 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.