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Abandoned mines › Maryland
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Baltimore County, Maryland

Baltimore County, Maryland has 126 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1894–1998; 4 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 23 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Baltimore 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)
126
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
23
4 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1894–1998 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    42 33.3%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    76 60.3%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    7 5.6%
  4. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 0.8%
Named features on the maps4 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Gunpowder Quarry Quarry
United Clay Mines, Mine No 2 Clay Pit area
United Clay Mines, Mine No 2 Clay Pit area
United Clay Mines, Mine No 2 Clay Pit area

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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned23 on register
  1. Baltimore Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Gold Bond Building Products · MSHA ID 1800575
    Abandoned
  2. Baltimore Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · United States Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 1800576
    Abandoned
  3. Baltimore South Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Imerys Carbonates USA, Inc. · MSHA ID 1800342
    Abandoned
  4. Blue Mount Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Maryland Blue Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1800716
    Abandoned
  5. Blue Mount Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluegrass Materials Company, LLC · MSHA ID 1800573
    Abandoned
  6. Butler Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · VSP Holdings LLC · MSHA ID 1800038
    Abandoned
  7. CALCIUM CARBONATE PLANT/MILL
    Facility metal/non-metal · Imerys Carbonates USA, Inc. · MSHA ID 1800343
    Abandoned
  8. Chase Sand Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lafarge Mid-Atlantic, LLC · MSHA ID 1800581
    Abandoned
  9. Delight Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Patuxent Aggregate Processors LLC · MSHA ID 1800004
    Abandoned
  10. George W Schwarz Division
    Surface metal/non-metal · White Marsh Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 1800580
    Abandoned
  11. GREENSPRING QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Florida Rock Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1800002
    Abandoned
  12. Joppa Road Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Genstar Stone Products Company · MSHA ID 1800314
    Abandoned
  13. LIME CREST PACKAGING
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lime Crest Corp · MSHA ID 1800732
    Abandoned
  14. Marriottsville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluegrass Materials Company, LLC · MSHA ID 1800010
    Abandoned
  15. Marriottsville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chesapeake Materials (division/Luck Stone Corp.) · MSHA ID 1800784
    Abandoned
  16. Powhatan Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Powhatan Mining Company · MSHA ID 1800412
    Abandoned
  17. Randallstown Quarry / Vinci Quarry 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · VSP Holdings, LLC · MSHA ID 1800549
    Abandoned
  18. Rossville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Baltimore Brick Company · MSHA ID 1800072
    Abandoned
  19. Texas Maryland Quarry No 2 And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Flintkote Stone Products Company · MSHA ID 1800485
    Abandoned
  20. Ultra Fine Plant Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ecci Calcium Products Inc · MSHA ID 1800723
    Abandoned
  21. White Marsh
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cyprus Industrial Minerals Company · MSHA ID 1800080
    Abandoned
  22. White Marsh Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Genstar Stone Products Company · MSHA ID 1800302
    Abandoned
  23. William Spiegel And Son
    Surface metal/non-metal · William Spiegel & Son Pit & Pla · MSHA ID 1800325
    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
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 27
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 16
Sand Pit 13
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 10
Sand Pit 10
Disturbed Surface 9
Quarry 8
Tailings - Pond 7
Clay Pit 6
Quarry 4
Clay Pit 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Gravel Pit 1
Borrow Pit 1
Tipple 1
Gravel Pit 1
Other counties in MarylandAll 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.