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Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cole County, Missouri

Cole County, Missouri has 52 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1939–1987. MSHA's register carries 14 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cole 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)
52
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1939–1987 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
    20 38.5%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    32 61.5%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned14 on register
  1. Barnhart Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Leonard Barnhart Construction · MSHA ID 2301654
    Abandoned
  2. Barnhart Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Leonard Barnhart Construction · MSHA ID 2301524
    Abandoned
  3. Barnhart Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Leonard Barnhart Construction · MSHA ID 2301653
    Abandoned
  4. Barnhart Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Leonard Barnhart Construction · MSHA ID 2300703
    Abandoned
  5. Beck Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Quarries Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301094
    Abandoned
  6. DREDGE #6020 (GRACE D)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301059
    Abandoned
  7. Eugene Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Quarries Co.,Inc. · MSHA ID 2302224
    Abandoned
  8. HWY 54 SOUTH QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Quarries Company Inc · MSHA ID 2302086
    Abandoned
  9. Jeff-Cole Portable Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jeff-Cole Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2300241
    Abandoned
  10. Justice Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Quarries Co. · MSHA ID 2302539
    Abandoned
  11. Marion Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mertens Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2302081
    Abandoned
  12. Mid Missouri Creek Rock Sales
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid Missouri Creek Rock Sales · MSHA ID 2302492
    Abandoned
  13. Show Me
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Quarries Co. · MSHA ID 2302544
    Abandoned
  14. Twehous Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Twehous Excavating Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301722
    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
Quarry 26
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 11
Quarry 4
Open Pit Mine 3
Disturbed Surface 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Gravel Pit 1
Clay Pit 1
Coal Mine 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.