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Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in McDowell County, North Carolina

McDowell County, North Carolina has 25 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1960–1994. 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 McDowell 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)
25
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
26
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits6 quadrangle maps, published 1960–1994 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    6 24.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    17 68.0%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 8.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned26 on register
  1. 226 Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · O J Wilson Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101358
    Abandoned
  2. BALSAM YARD
    Facility metal/non-metal · Balsam Stone Company · MSHA ID 3102170
    Abandoned
  3. Banks Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Explosives Supply Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101471
    Abandoned
  4. Black Rock Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carolina Grey Stone · MSHA ID 3102094
    Abandoned
  5. Blue Ridge Mine/Hicks Chapel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Ridge Mountain Stone, LLC. · MSHA ID 3102277
    Abandoned
  6. C F Mining
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carol Waycaster Stone Sales · MSHA ID 3102127
    Abandoned
  7. Canyon
    Surface metal/non-metal · cannon road mine · MSHA ID 3102327
    Abandoned
  8. Carolina Rose Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Foothills Grading · MSHA ID 3102304
    Abandoned
  9. Carolina Rose Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smoky Mountain Natural Stone Company · MSHA ID 3102305
    Abandoned
  10. Christy-Destiny
    Surface metal/non-metal · Imperial Mining Corp · MSHA ID 3102027
    Abandoned
  11. Dove Gray
    Surface metal/non-metal · Max Boyd & Son Stone Co · MSHA ID 3102210
    Abandoned
  12. Dove Gray Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buechel Stone Corp. · MSHA ID 3102070
    Abandoned
  13. Dove Gray Quarry #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buechel Stone Corp · MSHA ID 3102332
    Abandoned
  14. Edge Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cumberland Gravel & Sand Company · MSHA ID 3101952
    Abandoned
  15. Finley Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ossie Finley Building Stone · MSHA ID 3102019
    Abandoned
  16. H & H Trucking
    Surface metal/non-metal · H & H Trucking · MSHA ID 3102270
    Abandoned
  17. Hankins Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & W Stone Company · MSHA ID 3102002
    Abandoned
  18. Higgins Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Johnson Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101953
    Abandoned
  19. Karled Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Narex N C Inc · MSHA ID 3102040
    Abandoned
  20. Mccormick Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Douglas Dirt Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3101630
    Abandoned
  21. Midnight Blue
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Ridge Mountain Stone LLC · MSHA ID 3102325
    Abandoned
  22. Mojave Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Appalachian Stone · MSHA ID 3102326
    Abandoned
  23. Mountain Mist Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northfork Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3102266
    Abandoned
  24. Nick Waycaster Stone Co.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nick Waycaster Stone · MSHA ID 3101927
    Abandoned
  25. Simmons Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mineral City Mining & Stone Inc · MSHA ID 3102000
    Abandoned
  26. Vein Mountain Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Vein Mountain Processing Company Inc · MSHA ID 3102028
    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 and Gravel Pit 9
Quarry 4
Disturbed Surface 3
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Clay Pit 2
Settling Pond 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Gravel Pit 1
Open Pit Mine 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.