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Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Franklin County, Missouri

Franklin County, Missouri has 236 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1934–1980, including 3 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 1 prospect pits; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 4 problems in the county, 3 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 27 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Franklin 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)
236
Mine openings
3
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
3
MSHA mines marked abandoned
27
2 features carry a name1 prospect pits22 quadrangle maps, published 1934–1980 4 OSMRE problems, 1 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
    6 2.5%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    1 0.4%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    35 14.6%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    197 82.1%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    1 0.4%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Rueppele Mine Open Pit Mine area
Virginia Mines Mine

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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems4 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Bethel Church Shafts P1 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Bethel Church Shafts P2 Industrial/Residential Waste In Reclamation
Bethel Church Shafts P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Virginia Mines P1 Vertical Openings 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 Abandoned27 on register
  1. Ahlemeyer Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Francis Clay Mining & Hauling · MSHA ID 2301749
    Abandoned
  2. Angel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Francis Clay Mining & Hauling · MSHA ID 2301711
    Abandoned
  3. Churchill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Osage Fire Clay LLC · MSHA ID 2302559
    Abandoned
  4. Covington Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Covington Quarry Inc · MSHA ID 2302402
    Abandoned
  5. Dawson Quarry & Mill #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wm D Dawson Inc · MSHA ID 2300042
    Abandoned
  6. Farrell-Gober #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allied Corp-Allied Chemical Company · MSHA ID 2301858
    Abandoned
  7. G & R Luhring #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allied Corp-Allied Chemical Company · MSHA ID 2301856
    Abandoned
  8. Gravel Plant No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Franklin County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2301590
    Abandoned
  9. Gravel Plant No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Franklin County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2301591
    Abandoned
  10. Gray Summit Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boulder Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2301069
    Abandoned
  11. Graystone Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Riverstone Quarry Inc · MSHA ID 2300183
    Abandoned
  12. Jess Laubinger Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jess Laubinger Gravel Co · MSHA ID 2301525
    Abandoned
  13. John C Grob #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allied Corp-Allied Chemical Company · MSHA ID 2301857
    Abandoned
  14. LEIBACH PLANT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Walnut Ridge Enterprises Ltd · MSHA ID 2302074
    Abandoned
  15. MERAMEC AGGREGATES, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Meramec Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 2300708
    Abandoned
  16. New Haven Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rock & Lime Stone · MSHA ID 2300017
    Abandoned
  17. NORTHSIDE LANDFILLE INC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northside Landfill Inc · MSHA ID 2302103
    Abandoned
  18. Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barrett Materials Inc · MSHA ID 2302018
    Abandoned
  19. PLANT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ed'S Drilling & Blasting Company · MSHA ID 2301925
    Abandoned
  20. Schweer Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harbison-Walker Refractories U S · MSHA ID 2301692
    Abandoned
  21. St Albans
    Surface metal/non-metal · St Charles Quarry Company · MSHA ID 2302037
    Abandoned
  22. Tourville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sullivan Excavating & Paving · MSHA ID 2301355
    Abandoned
  23. Union Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · K R Wilson Contracting Inc · MSHA ID 2301909
    Abandoned
  24. WASHINGTON SAND CO LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Washington Sand Company Llc · MSHA ID 2300729
    Abandoned
  25. Weirich Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Francis Clay Mining & Hauling · MSHA ID 2301643
    Abandoned
  26. Wesley Frolker Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wehmeyer Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301750
    Abandoned
  27. Westerman Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jones & Turner Inc · MSHA ID 2301756
    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 96
Quarry 50
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 27
Clay Pit 20
Gravel Pit 20
Open Pit Mine 3
Quarry 3
Gravel Pit 3
Adit 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
P1 Vertical Openings 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Sand Pit 1
P2 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
Prospect Pit 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
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.