Abandoned mines in Union County, Kentucky

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   14 20.9%
2. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   12 17.9%
3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   2 3.0%
4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   8 11.9%
5. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   1 1.5%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   30 44.8%

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.

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.

1. Camp #11

   Surface coal · Peabody Coal Company · MSHA ID 1508357
   Abandoned and Sealed 2005-03-01
2. Camp #2

   Underground coal · Peabody Coal Company · MSHA ID 1502705
   Abandoned and Sealed 1993-08-20
3. Camp #3

   Underground coal · Peabody Coal Company · MSHA ID 1512513
   Abandoned and Sealed 1980-09-15
4. Caseyville Dock

   Facility coal · Lodestar Energy Incorporated · MSHA ID 1511887
   Abandoned 2004-03-30
5. CASEYVILLE YARD

   Surface metal/non-metal · Imi-South Llc · MSHA ID 1517839
   Abandoned 2002-05-01
6. CB-2 Conveyor

   Facility coal · Peabody Coal Company · MSHA ID 1516967
   Abandoned 2004-03-17
7. Central Shop

   Facility coal · Costain Coal Inc · MSHA ID 1511702
   Abandoned 1996-07-16
8. Crc No 1 Llc

   Facility coal · Crc #1 Llc · MSHA ID 1518066
   Abandoned 2006-01-09
9. Dekoven Mine

   Surface coal · Leafco Company Inc · MSHA ID 1507120
   Abandoned 1980-10-22
10. Dekoven Mine #6

    Underground coal · Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company · MSHA ID 1502130
    Abandoned 1971-03-09
11. Dodge Hill Carbon Recovery

    Surface coal · K.D. Crain & Sons, Inc. · MSHA ID 1519782
    Abandoned 2018-04-05
12. Hamilton #1 Carbon Recovery

    Surface coal · K D Crain & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 1518993
    Abandoned 2010-07-26
13. Hamilton #2

    Underground coal · Island Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 1502706
    Abandoned and Sealed 1994-03-18
14. Hamilton No 1 South

    Underground coal · Island Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 1512683
    Abandoned and Sealed 1983-12-30
15. Highland 11 Mine

    Underground coal · Highland Mining Company · MSHA ID 1518480
    Abandoned and Sealed 2003-06-27
16. Hurley No 1

    Surface coal · Jim Smith Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 1511619
    Abandoned 1982-02-05
17. No 9 Mine

    Surface coal · Central Transfer Company Inc · MSHA ID 1513282
    Abandoned 1983-09-30
18. Prep Plant No 1

    Facility coal · Pyro Mining Company · MSHA ID 1511703
    Abandoned 1985-04-01
19. Pyro #9 Slope William Station

    Underground coal · Pyro Mining Company · MSHA ID 1513881
    Abandoned and Sealed 1991-11-15
20. Pyro Mine No 6

    Underground coal · Pyro Mining Company · MSHA ID 1510353
    Abandoned and Sealed 1984-10-10
21. Pyro No 2

    Underground coal · Pyro Mining Company · MSHA ID 1502131
    Abandoned 1979-10-01
22. River View Carbon Recovery

    Surface coal · K D Crain & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 1519134
    Abandoned 2012-12-10
23. Rough Creek Mine

    Facility coal · Rough Creek Mining, LLC · MSHA ID 1518335
    Abandoned and Sealed 2015-05-28
24. Sullivan Mine

    Facility coal · Wolf Creek Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1515924
    Abandoned 1991-03-19
25. Sullivan Processing Plant

    Facility coal · Wolf Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 1517140
    Abandoned 1992-02-03
26. Sullivan Underground

    Underground coal · Wolf Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 1516806
    Abandoned 1993-06-21
27. Tex Mine #1

    Surface coal · Crittenden County Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1518830
    Abandoned and Sealed 2009-09-25
28. Uniontown Mine

    Underground coal · Island Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 1502128
    Abandoned 1972-02-09
29. Wolf Creek No 5

    Surface coal · Wolf Creek Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1513805
    Abandoned 1986-02-28

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Pike County 2,690
• Floyd County 2,006
• Letcher County 1,343
• Knott County 989
• Harlan County 911
• Johnson County 802
• Whitley County 726
• Perry County 695
• Knox County 639
• Bell County 627
• Leslie County 540
• Clay County 433

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.