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Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Audrain County, Missouri

Audrain County, Missouri has 51 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1942–1973. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 9 problems in the county, 9 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Audrain 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)
51
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
9
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1942–1973 9 OSMRE problems, 0 reclaimed 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
    1 1.7%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    9 15.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    42 70.0%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 3.3%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    6 10.0%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems9 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Farber Subsidence P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Farber Subsidence P3 Slump Reclamation Pending
Martinsburg P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Martinsburg P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Pending
Vandalia P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Pending
Vandalia P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Western Vandalia Sub. P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Western Vandalia Sub. P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Western Vandalia Sub. P3 Slump Reclamation Pending

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 Abandoned19 on register
  1. Bauxite Crushing Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Sonneborn Refrac & Chemicals Inc · MSHA ID 2301830
    Abandoned
  2. C-E Refractories Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · C-E Refractories · MSHA ID 2301488
    Abandoned
  3. ELT site 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid America Brick & Structural Clay Products LLC · MSHA ID 2302411
    Abandoned
  4. Erdel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp · MSHA ID 2301449
    Abandoned
  5. Farber Refractories Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · North American Refractories Company · MSHA ID 2301487
    Abandoned
  6. Jones
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp · MSHA ID 2301045
    Abandoned
  7. Kaiser Mine No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp · MSHA ID 2301047
    Abandoned
  8. Kaiser Refractories Mexico Works
    Facility metal/non-metal · Kaiser Refractories · MSHA ID 2301248
    Abandoned
  9. Martinsburg Limestone Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Martinsburg Limestone Company · MSHA ID 2300906
    Abandoned
  10. Mc Guire Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wellsville Fire Brick Company · MSHA ID 2300366
    Abandoned
  11. Mc Guire Soft Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hensley Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2300354
    Abandoned
  12. Mertens Clay Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mertens Construction Co., Inc. · MSHA ID 2300993
    Abandoned
  13. Milling & Calcining Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · A P Green Refractories Inc · MSHA ID 2300312
    Abandoned
  14. Sims Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · A P Green Refractories Inc · MSHA ID 2301004
    Abandoned
  15. Snook
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corp · MSHA ID 2301046
    Abandoned
  16. Sonora Mine
    Surface coal · Mexico Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301698
    Abandoned
  17. Todd Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mertens Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301076
    Abandoned
  18. Vandalia Works
    Facility metal/non-metal · Harbison-Walker Refractories U S · MSHA ID 2301489
    Abandoned
  19. Wright Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Christy Minerals Company · MSHA ID 2302269
    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
Clay Pit 23
Clay Pit 17
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 6
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
P3 Gobs 2
P3 Slump 2
P2 Subsidence 2
Quarry 2
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
P3 Mine Opening 1
Other counties in MissouriAll 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.