Mining Incidents
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Macon County, Missouri

Macon County, Missouri has 49 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1937–1979. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 64 problems in the county, 36 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 3 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Macon 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)
49
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
36
MSHA mines marked abandoned
3
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits6 quadrangle maps, published 1937–1979 64 OSMRE problems, 28 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
    4 3.5%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    45 39.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    2 1.8%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    19 16.8%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    2 1.8%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    41 36.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems64 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Claybank Creek P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Claybank Creek P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Claybank Creek P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Claybank Creek P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Claybank Creek P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P3 Haul Road Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P3 Other Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Claybank Creek P3 Water Problems Reclamation Pending
Hensley P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Highway T P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Keota Gob Pile P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Keota Gob Pile P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Keota Gob Pile P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Keota Gob Pile P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial Reclamation Completed
Keota Gob Pile P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Completed
Kohl P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Pending
Kohl P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Kohl P3 Pits Reclamation Pending
Kohl P3 Water Problems Reclamation Pending
North Weyer P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
North Weyer P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
North Weyer P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
North Weyer P3 Bench Reclamation Completed
North Weyer P3 Haul Road Reclamation Pending
North Weyer P3 High Wall Reclamation Pending
North Weyer P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
North Weyer P3 Other Reclamation Pending
North Weyer P3 Pits Reclamation Pending
North Weyer P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Old Bevier P2 Clogged Stream Lands In Reclamation
Old Bevier P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Old Bevier P3 Haul Road In Reclamation
Old Bevier P3 High Wall In Reclamation
Old Bevier P3 Industrial/Residential Waste In Reclamation
Old Bevier P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P3 Pits In Reclamation
Old Bevier P3 Slump In Reclamation
Old Bevier P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Old Bevier P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Old Bevier P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Picklesimmer P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Picklesimmer P3 High Wall Reclamation Pending
Picklesimmer P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Red Springs P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Red Springs P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Pending
Red Springs P3 Slump Reclamation Pending
Southeast Macon Subsidnc P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Teter Shaft P2 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Teter Shaft P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Teter Shaft P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Teter Shaft P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Winniger P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Winniger P3 Haul Road Reclamation Pending
Winniger P3 Spoil Area 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 Abandoned3 on register
  1. Bee-Veer Mine
    Surface coal · Associated Electric Cooperative Inc · MSHA ID 2300404
    Abandoned
  2. BENTLEY TRUCKING INC #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bentley Trucking Inc · MSHA ID 2301983
    Abandoned
  3. D A Young Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · D A Young Materials · MSHA ID 2301503
    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
Strip Mine 30
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 11
P3 Spoil Area 7
P3 Gobs 5
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 5
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 4
P3 Industrial/Residential Waste 4
P3 Haul Road 4
P3 Pits 3
P3 Other 3
P3 High Wall 3
P2 Clogged Streams 3
Strip Mine 3
P3 Water Problems 3
P2 Vertical Openings 3
P3 Slump 2
P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial 2
Mine Dump 2
P3 Equipment Facility 2
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
P1 Subsidence 2
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 1
Quarry 1
P2 Subsidence 1
P2 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P3 Bench 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Sand Pit 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.