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Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Brunswick County, North Carolina

Brunswick County, North Carolina has 41 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1984–1990. MSHA's register carries 17 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Brunswick 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
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1984–1990 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    33 80.5%
  2. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    8 19.5%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned17 on register
  1. Bellamy Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bellamy Sand Company · MSHA ID 3102063
    Abandoned
  2. Brunswick County North Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · N C Dept Of Transportation-Div Of Highways · MSHA ID 3100825
    Abandoned
  3. Brunswick County South Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · N C Dept Of Transportation-Div Of Highways · MSHA ID 3100824
    Abandoned
  4. Carolina Shores Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Epting-Ballenger Corp · MSHA ID 3101776
    Abandoned
  5. CHUCKS CONST. MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chucks Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3102131
    Abandoned
  6. COASTAL MARL COMPANY, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Coastal Marl Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101951
    Abandoned
  7. F&R DEVELOPMENT MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · F & R Development Inc · MSHA ID 3102132
    Abandoned
  8. J.P. RUSS & SON, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · J P Russ & Son Inc · MSHA ID 3102104
    Abandoned
  9. James C. Hewetts Sand and Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · James C. Hewetts Sand and Gravel · MSHA ID 3102134
    Abandoned
  10. Lm Mining
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lm Mc Lamb & Son Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3102026
    Abandoned
  11. Mc Quaig Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lake Shalamar Inc · MSHA ID 3102034
    Abandoned
  12. Navassa Sand
    Surface metal/non-metal · Riverfront Company, LLC · MSHA ID 3102163
    Abandoned
  13. Precise Sand Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Precise Construction · MSHA ID 3102064
    Abandoned
  14. Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Epting-Ballenger Corp · MSHA ID 3101302
    Abandoned
  15. Sawmill land and Sand
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sawmill land and Sand, LLC · MSHA ID 3102296
    Abandoned
  16. Towles Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · N C Dept Of Transportation-Div Of Highways · MSHA ID 3102030
    Abandoned
  17. WILMINGTON MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boggs Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3102175
    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
Sand Pit 25
Tailings - Undifferentiated 8
Gravel Pit 3
Sand Pit 3
Gravel Pit 2
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.