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Abandoned mines › North Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Yancey County, North Carolina

Yancey County, North Carolina has 113 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1934–1990, including 5 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). MSHA's register carries 21 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Yancey 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)
113
Mine openings
5
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1934–1990 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
    5 4.4%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    105 92.9%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    3 2.7%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned21 on register
  1. Blue Rock Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Powhatan Mining Company · MSHA ID 3101748
    Abandoned
  2. Boone Stone Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boone Stone Company · MSHA ID 3101897
    Abandoned
  3. Cane River Pit No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yancey Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3101336
    Abandoned
  4. Catawba River Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyd Contractors & Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3100409
    Abandoned
  5. DAYBOOK/FRANK MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grassy Creek Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101568
    Abandoned
  6. Fox Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fox Brothers · MSHA ID 3101643
    Abandoned
  7. Gibbs Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Ridge Grading & Landscaping · MSHA ID 3101796
    Abandoned
  8. HASSETT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Toe River Stone & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3102008
    Abandoned
  9. Hicks Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Deneen Mica Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101335
    Abandoned
  10. Hippy Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Powhatan Mining Company · MSHA ID 3100219
    Abandoned
  11. Hollifield Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · O J Wilson Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101954
    Abandoned
  12. Joven Mining Company, LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joven Mining Company LLC · MSHA ID 3102243
    Abandoned
  13. Mayland Stone Company Wray Mine And
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Minerals & Chemical Corp · MSHA ID 3100532
    Abandoned
  14. MICAVILLE
    Facility metal/non-metal · Zemex Mica Corp · MSHA ID 3101148
    Abandoned
  15. Newdale Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mayland Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3100677
    Abandoned
  16. Newdale Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Powhatan Mining Company · MSHA ID 3101747
    Abandoned
  17. Pensacola Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yancey Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3101476
    Abandoned
  18. PLANT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Unimin Corp · MSHA ID 3100678
    Abandoned
  19. Spruce Pine Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · United States Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 3100675
    Abandoned
  20. Wilson Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stone Supply Inc. · MSHA ID 3102186
    Abandoned
  21. Yancey County Quarry & Yard
    Surface metal/non-metal · O J Wilson Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3101134
    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 78
Strip Mine 19
Open Pit Mine 8
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Adit 3
Mine Shaft 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.