Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Osage County, Missouri

Osage County, Missouri has 120 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1939–1981. MSHA's register carries 12 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Osage 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)
120
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
12
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits15 quadrangle maps, published 1939–1981 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
    18 15.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    102 85.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned12 on register
  1. Belle Stockpile
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harbison-Walker Refractories U S · MSHA ID 2301396
    Abandoned
  2. HOF1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hidden Oaks Excavating · MSHA ID 2302466
    Abandoned
  3. Lane Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Delbert Wieberg Skid Loader & Dump Truck Service · MSHA ID 2302335
    Abandoned
  4. Linn Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Virgil Smith Quarries · MSHA ID 2301042
    Abandoned
  5. Marvin Fredrick Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Marvin Fredrick Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2301672
    Abandoned
  6. Massman Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brown Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2301761
    Abandoned
  7. Meta Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Meta Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302047
    Abandoned
  8. Osage County Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Osage County Quarry Company · MSHA ID 2301446
    Abandoned
  9. Portable Operation #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ralph Case Mining & Excavating · MSHA ID 2301973
    Abandoned
  10. Townley Brothers Tract
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hensley Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301747
    Abandoned
  11. Volkart Tract
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hensley Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301733
    Abandoned
  12. Westphalia Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 2301908
    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 79
Quarry 18
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 18
Shale Pit 4
Quarry 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.