Mining Incidents
Abandoned mine inventory

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
2 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1938–1991 44 OSMRE problems, 22 reclaimed 1 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    32 37.6%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    7 8.2%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    16 18.8%
  4. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    2 2.4%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    28 32.9%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems44 on inventory
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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned5 on register
  1. Corvette Mine
    Surface coal · L B Mines Inc · MSHA ID 2301776
    Abandoned
  2. Osceola Quarry #9
    Surface metal/non-metal · Batesco Quarries · MSHA ID 2301898
    Abandoned
  3. Snyder Mine And Mill
    Underground metal/non-metal · Williams Rock Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301309
    Abandoned
  4. Snyder Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hilty Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 2301145
    Abandoned
  5. Truman I
    Surface coal · Kingdom Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301945
    Abandoned and Sealed

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 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
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.