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Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Phelps County, Missouri

Phelps County, Missouri has 134 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1928–1985, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 5 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Phelps 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)
134
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
5 features carry a name0 prospect pits13 quadrangle maps, published 1928–1985 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
    1 0.7%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    26 19.4%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    107 79.9%
Named features on the maps5 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Beaver Creek Mine Open Pit Mine
Bronson Mine Open Pit Mine
Kelley Bank Open Pit Mine
Moselle Mine Open Pit Mine area
Reed Bank Open Pit 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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned19 on register
  1. Brandon Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wehmeyer Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301798
    Abandoned
  2. Dillon Mine LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dillon Clay Mine LLC · MSHA ID 2301244
    Abandoned
  3. Dillon Storage Shed
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dillon Clay Mining Company · MSHA ID 2301241
    Abandoned
  4. JEROME PLANT #11
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301944
    Abandoned
  5. Jerome Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · W J Menefee Construction Company · MSHA ID 2301585
    Abandoned
  6. K W Melton Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · K W Melton Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2301485
    Abandoned
  7. Mcdowell Asphalt Paving Co Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · William A Mc Dowell Company · MSHA ID 2301303
    Abandoned
  8. Melrose Sand and Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Melrose Quarry & Asphalt · MSHA ID 2302368
    Abandoned
  9. Mill No 1 (Old Pfizer Plant)
    Facility metal/non-metal · Mid America Minerals Inc · MSHA ID 2301869
    Abandoned
  10. ROHA AGGREGATES DIVISION
    Surface metal/non-metal · Havin Material Service Inc · MSHA ID 2301348
    Abandoned
  11. Rolla Materials Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rolla Materials Inc · MSHA ID 2301152
    Abandoned
  12. Rolla Plant #13
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 2302162
    Abandoned
  13. ROLLA QY & M
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Quarries Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301259
    Abandoned
  14. Rolla Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rolla Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302355
    Abandoned
  15. ROSATI
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rosati Sandstone Inc · MSHA ID 2302106
    Abandoned
  16. Roving Gravel Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Phelps County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2301580
    Abandoned
  17. Roving Screening Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Phelps County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2301598
    Abandoned
  18. SOETE SITE TOMNITZ SITE
    Surface metal/non-metal · W A Dillon Mining · MSHA ID 2302192
    Abandoned
  19. Universal
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gabel Stone Company · MSHA ID 2301907
    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 76
Clay Pit 11
Quarry 10
Open Pit Mine 8
Disturbed Surface - Pit 7
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Quarry 5
Open Pit Mine 4
Gravel Pit 3
Adit 1
Gravel Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 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.