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Abandoned mines › Kentucky
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Henderson County, Kentucky

Henderson County, Kentucky has 30 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1914–1993, including 17 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 9 problems in the county, 3 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 21 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Henderson 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)
30
Mine openings
17
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
3
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1914–1993 9 OSMRE problems, 6 reclaimed 3 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
    18 46.2%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    10 25.6%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    3 7.7%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 7.7%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    5 12.8%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems9 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Brisco Benton Road Gob P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Bush Slide P1 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Goldsberry Mine Subsidence P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Peggy Pruitt Subsidence P1 Subsidence In Reclamation
Pre 87 P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Pre 87 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Tillotson Rd./ky 54 Gob P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Tillotson Rd./ky 54 Gob P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Pending
Tillotson Rd./ky 54 Gob P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed

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 Abandoned21 on register
  1. #1 Mine
    Underground coal · Henderson Coal Company · MSHA ID 1500673
    Abandoned
  2. Auger Drill #1
    Surface coal · John E Mc Cullough Augering · MSHA ID 1517628
    Abandoned
  3. Auger Drill #2
    Surface coal · John E Mc Cullough Augering · MSHA ID 1517600
    Abandoned
  4. Bluegrass Mine
    Surface coal · ERP Environmental Fund Inc · MSHA ID 1516231
    Abandoned
  5. Coal Tech Job 2
    Facility coal · Coal Tech Inc · MSHA ID 1517940
    Abandoned
  6. Dredge III/ Henderson Yard
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pine Bluff Materials Co LLC · MSHA ID 1516989
    Abandoned
  7. DREDGE V
    Surface metal/non-metal · Imi-South Llc · MSHA ID 1504262
    Abandoned
  8. DREDGE VI
    Surface metal/non-metal · IMI-South LLC · MSHA ID 1517688
    Abandoned
  9. Freedom
    Underground coal · Ohio County Coal Company LLC · MSHA ID 1517587
    Abandoned and Sealed
  10. Grand Eagle Prep Plant
    Facility coal · Grand Eagle Mining, LLC · MSHA ID 1519011
    Abandoned
  11. Green Mine
    Facility coal · Tri State Coal Washers Inc · MSHA ID 1517048
    Abandoned
  12. Hatchett Mill Mine
    Underground coal · Green Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1517475
    Abandoned and Sealed
  13. Henderson #1
    Facility coal · Coal Recovery Systems Inc · MSHA ID 1517629
    Abandoned
  14. Henderson Materials Inc Henderson P
    Surface metal/non-metal · Henderson Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1504259
    Abandoned
  15. Henderson Mine
    Surface coal · Cr Mining Company · MSHA ID 1516454
    Abandoned
  16. N.A.A.M. No 10
    Surface coal · North American Auger Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1518698
    Abandoned
  17. Panama Mine
    Underground coal · Peabody Coal Company · MSHA ID 1506832
    Abandoned
  18. Renfro Equipment Inc
    Surface coal · Renfro Equipment Inc · MSHA ID 1517999
    Abandoned
  19. Retiki Mine
    Underground coal · Webster County Coal Corp · MSHA ID 1500672
    Abandoned and Sealed
  20. Towhead Island
    Underground coal · Consolidation Coal Company · MSHA ID 1511638
    Abandoned
  21. Weslo Patriot #1
    Surface coal · Weslo Inc · MSHA ID 1518005
    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
Mine Shaft 16
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 10
P1 Subsidence 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
P2 Dangerous Slides 1
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Gobs 1
Adit 1
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 1
Quarry 1
P1 Dangerous Slides 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 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.