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Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Avery County, North Carolina

Avery County, North Carolina has 76 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1934–1994, including 24 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 10 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 11 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Avery 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)
76
Mine openings
24
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
11
10 features carry a name0 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1934–1994 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
    24 31.6%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    47 61.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    5 6.6%
Named features on the maps10 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Black Rock Cliffs Cave Adit
Cranberry Mines Adit
Garnett Mine Open Pit Mine
Gusher Knob Mine Strip Mine area
Hempile Mine Adit
Jackson Mine Open Pit Mine
Patrick Mine Adit
Waterhole Mine Adit
Waterhole Mine Open Pit Mine
Waterhole 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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned11 on register
  1. Cranberry Mine & Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cranberry Magnetite Corp · MSHA ID 3100209
    Abandoned
  2. Exploration Drill Site #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Framco · MSHA ID 3101744
    Abandoned
  3. Frank Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Minerals & Chemical Corp · MSHA ID 3101976
    Abandoned
  4. FRANK MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grassy Creek Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101499
    Abandoned
  5. Grandfather Mtn Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Troitino Construction Company · MSHA ID 3100191
    Abandoned
  6. Gushers Knob Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harris Mining Company · MSHA ID 3101112
    Abandoned
  7. Henson Creek Aquamarine Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Elbert D Watson · MSHA ID 3101725
    Abandoned
  8. Henson Creek Garnet Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pat Watson · MSHA ID 3101726
    Abandoned
  9. LENVILLE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clark Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3100369
    Abandoned
  10. PUTNAM MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clark Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3102139
    Abandoned
  11. Schoolhouse Research & Development
    Surface metal/non-metal · Unimin Corp · MSHA ID 3102001
    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
Adit 24
Open Pit Mine 17
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 17
Strip Mine 8
Disturbed Surface 5
Quarry 3
Clay Pit 1
Gravel Pit 1
Other counties in North CarolinaAll 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.