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Abandoned mines › Kentucky
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Wayne County, Kentucky

Wayne County, Kentucky has 66 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1953–1983, including 35 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 2 prospect pits. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 6 problems in the county, 3 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Wayne 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)
66
Mine openings
35
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
3
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name2 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1953–1983 6 OSMRE problems, 3 reclaimed 2 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
    35 48.6%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    2 2.8%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    27 37.5%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    2 2.8%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 2.8%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    4 5.6%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems6 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Coal Cliff-turkey Creek P3 Bench Reclamation Pending
Coal Cliff-turkey Creek P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Denney-delta Water Supply P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Completed
Lick Creek Mines P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Pre 87 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Spann Water Supply P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 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 Abandoned20 on register
  1. #1
    Surface coal · Odell Coal Inc · MSHA ID 1514969
    Abandoned
  2. Bald Rock Mine And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bald Rock Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 1509970
    Abandoned
  3. E & D No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · E & D Coal Company · MSHA ID 1511435
    Abandoned
  4. Elk Ridge No 2 Surface
    Surface coal · 10-Creek Mining Company · MSHA ID 1511334
    Abandoned
  5. Greenwood #10
    Underground coal · Shamrock Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1515549
    Abandoned and Sealed
  6. Meadow Creek
    Surface coal · Ikerd-Bandy Company Inc · MSHA ID 1509790
    Abandoned
  7. Mine #5
    Surface coal · Quality State Coal Company · MSHA ID 1512039
    Abandoned
  8. Mine No 1
    Surface coal · Fenco Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 1514966
    Abandoned
  9. No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · J & C Coal Company · MSHA ID 1508485
    Abandoned
  10. No 1 Rockcastle
    Surface coal · Rockcastle Company · MSHA ID 1510378
    Abandoned
  11. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Mid South Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1508472
    Abandoned
  12. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Thunderbird Coal Corp · MSHA ID 1508603
    Abandoned
  13. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Anbros Inc · MSHA ID 1509988
    Abandoned
  14. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Bud Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1512693
    Abandoned
  15. No 1 Surface (Greenwood)
    Surface coal · Shamrock Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1511030
    Abandoned
  16. No 1 Surface Mine
    Surface coal · Jasper & Jasper Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 1506286
    Abandoned
  17. No 2
    Surface coal · Sexton Brothers Coal Inc · MSHA ID 1514611
    Abandoned
  18. Parvin
    Surface coal · Mecklenburg Coal & Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1511466
    Abandoned and Sealed
  19. Rose Ridge Mining
    Surface coal · Larue Mining Company · MSHA ID 1514053
    Abandoned
  20. Southland C-6 Mine
    Underground coal · Southland Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 1508945
    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
Adit 35
Strip Mine 24
Quarry 2
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 2
Disturbed Surface 2
Prospect Pit 2
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
P3 Bench 1
P2 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.