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Abandoned mines › Missouri
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Washington County, Missouri

Washington County, Missouri has 275 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1934–1999, including 11 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 1 prospect pits; 9 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 34 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Washington 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)
275
Mine openings
11
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
34
9 features carry a name1 prospect pits19 quadrangle maps, published 1934–1999 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
    11 4.0%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    1 0.4%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    208 75.6%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    3 1.1%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    52 18.9%
Named features on the maps9 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Evans Mine Mine Shaft
Eversole Mine Mine Shaft
Indian Creek Mine Mine Dump
Indian Creek Mine Mine Shaft
Indian Creek Mine Mine Shaft
Indian Creek Mine Tailings - Undifferentiated area
Irondale Mine Mine Shaft
Pea Ridge Mine Mine
Pea Ridge Mine Mine Shaft

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 Abandoned34 on register
  1. Arnold Ready Mix Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arnold Ready Mix Corp · MSHA ID 2301644
    Abandoned
  2. Big 4 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · N L Baroid-Div/N L Industries Inc · MSHA ID 2300560
    Abandoned
  3. Blackwell Washer
    Surface metal/non-metal · N L Baroid-Div/N L Industries Inc · MSHA ID 2300561
    Abandoned
  4. DAWSON S & G
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dawson Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302133
    Abandoned
  5. Fountain Farm Grinding Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cimbar Performance Minerals · MSHA ID 2300562
    Abandoned
  6. FOUNTAIN FARM MILL
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cimbar Performance Minerals · MSHA ID 2300563
    Abandoned
  7. General Barite Company Blackwell Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · General Barite Company · MSHA ID 2300551
    Abandoned
  8. General Barite Company Old Mines Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · General Barite Company · MSHA ID 2300550
    Abandoned
  9. GP Materials South
    Surface metal/non-metal · GP MATERIALS SOUTH · MSHA ID 2302457
    Abandoned
  10. Hornsey Bros Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hornsey Brothers Mining Company · MSHA ID 2300552
    Abandoned
  11. Imco Apex Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Missouri Resource Services Inc · MSHA ID 2301796
    Abandoned
  12. Imco-Apex Washing Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Imco Services · MSHA ID 2301730
    Abandoned
  13. Indian Creek Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Doe Run Company · MSHA ID 2300497
    Abandoned
  14. Keyes Branch Mine And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milchem Inc · MSHA ID 2301162
    Abandoned
  15. Kingston #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Soto Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2300567
    Abandoned
  16. Mineral Point Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Extender Products Limited · MSHA ID 2300553
    Abandoned
  17. Mount Sand & Gravel Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · A M Mount Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2300714
    Abandoned
  18. Parole Mine And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Soto Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2300555
    Abandoned
  19. PEA RIDGE IRON ORE CO
    Underground metal/non-metal · Pea Ridge Iron Ore Company Inc · MSHA ID 2300454
    Abandoned
  20. PEA RIDGE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lafarge North America Incorporated · MSHA ID 2301880
    Abandoned
  21. Pea Ridge Resources
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pea Ridge Resources · MSHA ID 2302356
    Abandoned
  22. Pinson Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pinson Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2301991
    Abandoned
  23. Plant A
    Surface metal/non-metal · Agers Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2300548
    Abandoned
  24. Plant B
    Surface metal/non-metal · Agers Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2300549
    Abandoned
  25. Pond Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pond Creek Stone Company · MSHA ID 2301671
    Abandoned
  26. Portable Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · K & D Crushing Inc · MSHA ID 2302026
    Abandoned
  27. Potosi Grinding Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Magcobar Minerals Division · MSHA ID 2300559
    Abandoned
  28. Potosi Washer Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Magcobar Minerals Division · MSHA ID 2300806
    Abandoned
  29. Richwoods Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Soto Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2301771
    Abandoned
  30. Sullivan Plant # 14
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capital Sand Company · MSHA ID 2302305
    Abandoned
  31. Villmer Rock & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Villmer Rock & Gravel · MSHA ID 2301992
    Abandoned
  32. Waco Materials Pit and Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Politte Ready Mix LLC · MSHA ID 2301266
    Abandoned
  33. Washington County Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Washington County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2301781
    Abandoned
  34. WILLIAMS SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Williams Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2302051
    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
Open Pit Mine 118
Strip Mine 48
Tailings - Pond 42
Open Pit Mine 23
Mine Shaft 11
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 11
Tailings - Undifferentiated 9
Disturbed Surface - Pit 6
Gravel Pit 2
Disturbed Surface 1
Mine 1
Mine Dump 1
Clay Pit 1
Prospect Pit 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.