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Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Benton County, Missouri

Benton County, Missouri has 38 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1938–1991, including 10 prospect pits. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 4 problems in the county, all of them 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 Benton 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)
38
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name10 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1938–1991 4 OSMRE problems, 4 reclaimed 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    10 23.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    17 40.5%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    9 21.4%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 7.1%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    3 7.1%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems4 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Evans P2 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Evans P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial Reclamation Completed
Evans P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Completed
Evans P3 Spoil Area 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. BAILEY'S S & G #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bailey'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302082
    Abandoned
  2. Bailey'S Sand & Gravel #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bailey'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302083
    Abandoned
  3. Bailey'S Sand & Gravel #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bailey'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302084
    Abandoned
  4. Bell Sand and Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bell Sand and Gravel · MSHA ID 2302302
    Abandoned
  5. BENTON COUNTY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Benton County Road District · MSHA ID 2302061
    Abandoned
  6. Benton County Rd Dist No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Benton County Road District No 1 · MSHA ID 2302393
    Abandoned
  7. Dan Fletcher Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dan Fletcher · MSHA ID 2301886
    Abandoned
  8. Indian Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · Indian Creek Rock & Sand · MSHA ID 2302453
    Abandoned
  9. Jess Vogler
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jess Vogler · MSHA ID 2302321
    Abandoned
  10. Northwest Mine & Mill
    Underground metal/non-metal · Hilty Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2300924
    Abandoned
  11. PALO QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Materials LLC · MSHA ID 2302197
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hilty Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2302381
    Abandoned
  13. Reed Blackman Jr Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Reed Blackman Jr · MSHA ID 2301867
    Abandoned
  14. Schultz Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schultz Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302298
    Abandoned
  15. Schultz Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schultz Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302433
    Abandoned
  16. SHAWNEE BEND QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blast-Co Contracting · MSHA ID 2302229
    Abandoned
  17. SMASAL SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smasal Aggregates · MSHA ID 2302198
    Abandoned
  18. Turkey Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bruce Woods · MSHA ID 2302334
    Abandoned
  19. Vogler Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vogler Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302454
    Abandoned
  20. Warsaw Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hilty Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2300536
    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
Prospect Pit 10
Disturbed Surface - Pit 10
Quarry 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Gravel Pit 2
Gravel Pit 2
P2 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial 1
Mine Dump 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 1
Strip Mine 1
Tailings - Pond 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.