Abandoned mines in Vernon County, Missouri

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   2 1.6%
2. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   55 43.7%
3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   6 4.8%
4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   19 15.1%
5. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   1 0.8%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   43 34.1%

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 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.

1. Bills No 2 Strip Mine

   Surface coal · Bills Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 2300405
   Abandoned 1975-09-16
2. Bronaugh Mine

   Surface coal · Amearth Corp · MSHA ID 2301687
   Abandoned 1991-07-18
3. Bronaugh Quarry #16

   Surface metal/non-metal · Cullor Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301825
   Abandoned 1985-07-10
4. Ellis Strip

   Surface coal · Ellis Coal Company · MSHA ID 2300399
   Abandoned 1979-10-01
5. Fort Scott Mine

   Surface coal · Bills Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 2300400
   Abandoned 1977-06-02
6. Mary Jane Mine No 1

   Surface coal · Continental Coal Inc · MSHA ID 2301959
   Abandoned 1997-06-30
7. Midwest Projects Inc.

   Surface metal/non-metal · Midwest Projects Inc. · MSHA ID 2302258
   Abandoned 2009-08-05
8. Montevallo #8

   Surface metal/non-metal · Batesco Quarries · MSHA ID 2301530
   Abandoned 1985-07-23
9. Morris Rock Inc

   Surface metal/non-metal · Morris Rock Inc · MSHA ID 2300289
   Abandoned 2021-09-28
10. PALMER LIMESTONE

    Surface metal/non-metal · Palmer Limestone · MSHA ID 2302222
    Abandoned 2007-06-19
11. Palmer Quarry And Mill

    Surface metal/non-metal · Midwestern Mining & Reclamation Inc · MSHA ID 2300117
    Abandoned 1979-11-20
12. Quarry & Plant No 2

    Surface metal/non-metal · Fort Scott Fertilizers Inc · MSHA ID 2301697
    Abandoned 1985-07-11
13. Reaves Surface Mine

    Surface coal · Reaves Coal Company · MSHA ID 2301693
    Abandoned 1978-03-21
14. Rich Hill #4

    Surface metal/non-metal · Batesco Quarries · MSHA ID 2301321
    Abandoned 1985-07-23
15. White Rock Quarry

    Surface metal/non-metal · Fort Scott Fertilizers Inc · MSHA ID 2301539
    Abandoned 1985-07-11
16. Woodcrest #1

    Surface metal/non-metal · Woodcrest Materials LLC · MSHA ID 2302574
    Abandoned 2024-08-29

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Jasper County 1,320
• Gasconade County 843
• Washington County 275
• Montgomery County 259
• Franklin County 236
• Callaway County 233
• Newton County 217
• Henry County 201
• Warren County 191
• Jackson County 144
• Dunklin County 141
• Phelps County 134

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.