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Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Macon County, North Carolina

Macon County, North Carolina has 201 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1935–1978, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 1 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 26 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Macon 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)
201
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
26
1 features carry a name0 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1935–1978 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
    1 0.5%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    197 98.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    3 1.5%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Mica 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 Abandoned26 on register
  1. Bonanza Gem Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kenneth Shepherd · MSHA ID 3101698
    Abandoned
  2. Bonanza Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rene J Fafard · MSHA ID 3101637
    Abandoned
  3. Caler Creek Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ed Brogden · MSHA ID 3101604
    Abandoned
  4. Cherokee Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eastern Cherokee Land Inc · MSHA ID 3101634
    Abandoned
  5. Cherokee Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eastern Cherokee Land Inc · MSHA ID 3101784
    Abandoned
  6. Dale And Demkos Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dale & Demko · MSHA ID 3101625
    Abandoned
  7. Franklin
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hays Corp · MSHA ID 3100700
    Abandoned
  8. FRANKLIN MINERAL
    Facility metal/non-metal · Mearl Corp-Fmp Division · MSHA ID 3100271
    Abandoned
  9. Franklin Mineral Products Company
    Facility metal/non-metal · Franklin Mineral Products Company · MSHA ID 3101746
    Abandoned
  10. Gibsons Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ruby Gibson & Sons · MSHA ID 3101645
    Abandoned
  11. Gregory Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gregory Ruby Mine · MSHA ID 3101646
    Abandoned
  12. Holbrook Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · James W Holbrook · MSHA ID 3101656
    Abandoned
  13. Jacobs Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jacobs Mine · MSHA ID 3101658
    Abandoned
  14. Jones Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jerry Lee Jones · MSHA ID 3101661
    Abandoned
  15. Lyle Knob Gem Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Frank Jones · MSHA ID 3101782
    Abandoned
  16. Mason Mountain Rhodolite Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brown L Johnson · MSHA ID 3101659
    Abandoned
  17. Mason Sapphire Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roy T Mason · MSHA ID 3101666
    Abandoned
  18. Mason Sapphire Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fairyland Rock & Gems · MSHA ID 3101753
    Abandoned
  19. Mccook Ruby & Rhodolite Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fannie Mashburn · MSHA ID 3101665
    Abandoned
  20. Mincey Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · R K D Mining & Development Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101691
    Abandoned
  21. No 9 Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · National Olivine Company · MSHA ID 3101569
    Abandoned
  22. Parker Quarry & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Franklin Grading Company Stone Division · MSHA ID 3101762
    Abandoned
  23. Rock Hound Haven Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rock Hound Haven · MSHA ID 3101785
    Abandoned
  24. Sheffield Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Robert T Bryson · MSHA ID 3101786
    Abandoned
  25. Shuler Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ruth Buchanan · MSHA ID 3101608
    Abandoned
  26. Yukon Ruby Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grace Donaldson · MSHA ID 3101628
    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 or Quarry 188
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 6
Open Pit Mine 2
Quarry 2
Quarry 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Mine Shaft 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.