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Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Wayne County, North Carolina

Wayne County, North Carolina has 52 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1957–1998. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Wayne 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)
52
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1957–1998 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
    7 13.5%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    40 76.9%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 9.6%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned19 on register
  1. Buckhorn Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barrus Construction Company · MSHA ID 3101712
    Abandoned
  2. Buckhorn Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buckhorn Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3101922
    Abandoned
  3. Busco Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Builders Supplies Company · MSHA ID 3100410
    Abandoned
  4. Cedar Lake Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W F Spence Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3101916
    Abandoned
  5. Edwards Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barrus Construction Company · MSHA ID 3101355
    Abandoned
  6. Gainey Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mobile Equipment Company · MSHA ID 3101315
    Abandoned
  7. GAINEY'S SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gainey'S Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 3100421
    Abandoned
  8. Godwins Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · P B Land Corp · MSHA ID 3101757
    Abandoned
  9. Gray Concrete Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gray Concrete Pipe Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101364
    Abandoned
  10. Gwaltney Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Apac-Carolina Inc · MSHA ID 3101845
    Abandoned
  11. LANCASTER PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Apac-Carolina Inc · MSHA ID 3101300
    Abandoned
  12. Mcarthur Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W P Rose Supply Company · MSHA ID 3101709
    Abandoned
  13. Musgrave Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Loyd Hinson Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3101876
    Abandoned
  14. Musgrave Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lloyd Hinson Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3101931
    Abandoned
  15. Musgrove Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Apac-Carolina Inc · MSHA ID 3101846
    Abandoned
  16. Preston Dixon Mining
    Surface metal/non-metal · Preston Dixon Mining · MSHA ID 3102113
    Abandoned
  17. Round-About Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W P Rose Supply Company · MSHA ID 3101710
    Abandoned
  18. Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Langston Sand & Gravel Service · MSHA ID 3101830
    Abandoned
  19. Wayne County Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · N C Dept Of Transportation-Div Of Highways · MSHA ID 3101058
    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 16
Gravel Pit 8
Disturbed Surface 7
Sand Pit 6
Settling Pond 4
Gravel Pit 3
Clay Pit 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Tailings - Pond 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.