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Abandoned mines › Kentucky
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Jefferson County, Kentucky

Jefferson County, Kentucky has 68 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1994, including 5 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Jefferson 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)
68
Mine openings
5
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1994 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
    5 7.4%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    8 11.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    26 38.2%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    29 42.6%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned18 on register
  1. 6293
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lehigh · MSHA ID 1519888
    Abandoned
  2. Alert Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nugent Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 1510299
    Abandoned
  3. Avoca
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nugent Sand Company · MSHA ID 1517037
    Abandoned
  4. Cane Run
    Surface metal/non-metal · Billy Holloway Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 1513646
    Abandoned
  5. Central Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nugent Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 1504270
    Abandoned
  6. Coral Ridge
    Surface metal/non-metal · General Shale Brick, Inc. · MSHA ID 1500167
    Abandoned
  7. Deering Rd. Sand
    Surface metal/non-metal · Deering Rd LLC · MSHA ID 1518194
    Abandoned
  8. DREDGE #11
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nugent Sand Company · MSHA ID 1518206
    Abandoned
  9. FERN CREEK STONE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1500021
    Abandoned
  10. First Street Yard
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1511140
    Abandoned
  11. Hel Del Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1504271
    Abandoned
  12. JEFFERSON COUNTY STONE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 1500096
    Abandoned
  13. Kosmos Cement Co.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cemex Inc. · MSHA ID 1503160
    Abandoned
  14. Louisville Crushed Stone Mine & Mil
    Underground metal/non-metal · Louisville Crushed Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1500060
    Abandoned
  15. Mine No 2 Strip
    Surface coal · Star Contracting & Mining Company · MSHA ID 0100857
    Abandoned
  16. Ohio River Ordinance Shop And Yards
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 1507465
    Abandoned
  17. Okolona Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 1500108
    Abandoned
  18. RIVERPORT YARD
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nugent Sand Company · MSHA ID 1518205
    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
Tailings - Pond 18
Quarry 11
Tailings - Undifferentiated 6
Settling Pond 5
Adit 5
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
Disturbed Surface 4
Gravel Pit 2
Gravel Pit 2
Sand Pit 2
Quarry 1
Clay Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Sand and Gravel Pit 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.