Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cabarrus County, North Carolina

Cabarrus County, North Carolina has 35 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1962–1993, including 2 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 2 of the features carry a name on the map. 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 Cabarrus 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)
35
Mine openings
2
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
2 features carry a name0 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1962–1993 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
    2 5.7%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 11.4%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    29 82.9%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Reed Gold Mine Mine Shaft
Reed Gold 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 Abandoned17 on register
  1. Cabarrus County Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rea Construction Company · MSHA ID 3101835
    Abandoned
  2. CEDAR ROSE QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · N C Granite Corp · MSHA ID 3101986
    Abandoned
  3. ERVIN
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joe H Ervin Grading Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101249
    Abandoned
  4. Furr'S Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Furr'S Gravel · MSHA ID 3101270
    Abandoned
  5. Garman
    Underground metal/non-metal · Medow Creek Mining Company · MSHA ID 3101966
    Abandoned
  6. Gold Hill Clay & Shale Mn
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hammill Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3100157
    Abandoned
  7. Greensboro Portable Plant 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3102335
    Abandoned
  8. Mecklenburg County
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rea Construction Company · MSHA ID 3101824
    Abandoned
  9. MIDLAND FIELD
    Surface metal/non-metal · FOREMOST PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION · MSHA ID 3102248
    Abandoned
  10. Morrison Gravel Co Pit #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morrison Gravel Co · MSHA ID 3100720
    Abandoned
  11. Moyer Prospect-Mt. Pleasant, N.C.
    Underground metal/non-metal · Pickett Mining · MSHA ID 3102221
    Abandoned
  12. Overcash Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Overcash Gravel & Grading · MSHA ID 3101273
    Abandoned
  13. Penninger Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Penningers Gravel & Landscaping · MSHA ID 3101496
    Abandoned
  14. Rocky River Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 3102033
    Abandoned
  15. Salisbury Grinding Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Old Carolina Brick Company · MSHA ID 3101379
    Abandoned
  16. SEH Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · SEH Mine · MSHA ID 3102312
    Abandoned
  17. Sloops Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jacob H H Sloop Grading Incorporate · MSHA ID 3101468
    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
Gravel Pit 15
Gravel Pit 6
Disturbed Surface 4
Quarry 3
Quarry 2
Mine Shaft 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Sand 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.