Abandoned mines in St. Clair County, Missouri
St. Clair County, Missouri has 41 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1938–1991; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 44 problems in the county, 22 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 5 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.
Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering St. Clair 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)
- 41
- Mine openings
- 0
- OSMRE problems unreclaimed
- 22
- MSHA mines marked abandoned
- 5
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32 37.6%Mines and surface workingslabelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
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7 8.2%Quarries, gravel and borrow pitsconstruction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
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16 18.8%Dumps, tailings, spoil and gobwhat mining left above ground
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2 2.4%Mills, tipples and facilitiesprocessing plants and hazardous structures
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28 32.9%Other reclamation problemshighwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
| Name on map | Feature |
|---|---|
| Hays Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Old Short Mine | 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.
| Problem area | Problem | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Appleton City | P2 Dangerous Highwalls | Reclamation Completed |
| Appleton City | P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments | Reclamation Completed |
| Appleton City | P2 Hazardous Water Bodies | Reclamation Completed |
| Appleton City | P3 Spoil Area | Reclamation Completed |
| Greathouse | P3 Gobs | Reclamation Pending |
| Greathouse | P3 High Wall | Reclamation Pending |
| Greathouse | P3 Spoil Area | Reclamation Pending |
| Greathouse | P3 Water Problems | Reclamation Pending |
| Hawes | P3 High Wall | Reclamation Pending |
| Hawes | P3 Industrial/Residential Waste | Reclamation Pending |
| Hawes | P3 Spoil Area | Reclamation Pending |
| Hawes | P3 Water Problems | Reclamation Pending |
| Hellbender | P3 Pits | Reclamation Pending |
| Hellbender | P3 Spoil Area | Reclamation Pending |
| Inky | P1 Dangerous Impoundments | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P1 Underground Mine Fires | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P2 Dangerous Impoundments | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P2 Surface Burning | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P3 Gobs | Reclamation Completed |
| Inky | P3 Spoil Area | Reclamation Completed |
| Jones | P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments | Reclamation Pending |
| Lewis Drifts | P3 Gobs | Reclamation Pending |
| Lewis Drifts | P3 Mine Opening | Reclamation Pending |
| Lewis Drifts | P3 Water Problems | Reclamation Pending |
| Otter Creek | P2 Dangerous Highwalls | Reclamation Completed |
| Otter Creek | P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial | Reclamation Completed |
| Otter Creek | P3 High Wall | Reclamation Completed |
| Otter Creek | P3 Pits | Reclamation Completed |
| Otter Creek | P3 Spoil Area | Reclamation Completed |
| Snider | P2 Dangerous Highwalls | Reclamation Completed |
| Snider | P3 High Wall | Reclamation Pending |
| Tindall | P2 Dangerous Highwalls | Reclamation Completed |
| Tindall | P2 Hazardous Water Bodies | Reclamation Completed |
| Wilkens Brothers | P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments | Reclamation Pending |
| Wilkens Brothers | P3 Equipment Facility | Reclamation Pending |
| Wilkens Brothers | P3 High Wall | In Reclamation |
| Wilkens Brothers | P3 Industrial/Residential Waste | Reclamation Pending |
| Wilkens Brothers | P3 Other | Reclamation Pending |
| Wilkens Brothers | P3 Pits | In Reclamation |
| Wilkens Brothers | 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.
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Corvette MineAbandoned 1980-05-14Surface coal · L B Mines Inc · MSHA ID 2301776
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Osceola Quarry #9Abandoned 1985-05-28Surface metal/non-metal · Batesco Quarries · MSHA ID 2301898
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Snyder Mine And MillAbandoned 1978-12-29Underground metal/non-metal · Williams Rock Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301309
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Snyder QuarryAbandoned 1985-05-28Surface metal/non-metal · Hilty Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2301145
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Truman IAbandoned and Sealed 1987-09-29Surface coal · Kingdom Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301945
Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.
| Feature type | Features |
|---|---|
| Strip Mine | 16 |
| Open Pit Mine or Quarry | 13 |
| P3 Spoil Area | 7 |
| P3 High Wall | 5 |
| P2 Dangerous Highwalls | 4 |
| P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments | 3 |
| P3 Pits | 3 |
| Open Pit Mine | 3 |
| Quarry | 3 |
| P3 Gobs | 3 |
| P3 Water Problems | 3 |
| Gravel Pit | 2 |
| P3 Industrial/Residential Waste | 2 |
| P2 Hazardous Water Bodies | 2 |
| P2 Polluted Water: Agricultural & Industrial | 2 |
| Quarry | 2 |
| P2 Surface Burning | 1 |
| P3 Equipment Facility | 1 |
| P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities | 1 |
| P1 Dangerous Impoundments | 1 |
| P2 Dangerous Impoundments | 1 |
| P3 Mine Opening | 1 |
| Tailings - Undifferentiated | 1 |
| P3 Other | 1 |
| P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities | 1 |
| P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments | 1 |
| Mine Dump | 1 |
| P1 Underground Mine Fires | 1 |
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.