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Abandoned mines › Nebraska
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Buffalo County, Nebraska

Buffalo County, Nebraska has 60 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1961–1993. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Buffalo 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)
60
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1961–1993 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
    5 8.3%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    55 91.7%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned20 on register
  1. Broadfoot Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Broadfoot Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2500339
    Abandoned
  2. Buffalo Portable #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carl Whitney Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2501076
    Abandoned
  3. Cook Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cook Construction Company · MSHA ID 2500956
    Abandoned
  4. East Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nebraska Credit Finance Corp · MSHA ID 2501009
    Abandoned
  5. Elm Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · KE-BECK Company · MSHA ID 2501206
    Abandoned
  6. Johnson Sand And Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Johnson Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2500261
    Abandoned
  7. Kearney Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Interstate Development · MSHA ID 2501270
    Abandoned
  8. KEARNEY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buffalo County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2500099
    Abandoned
  9. Kilgore West
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-Nebraska Aggregate Inc. · MSHA ID 2501060
    Abandoned
  10. LEONARD PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Leonard Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2500265
    Abandoned
  11. Newark Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Whitney Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2500460
    Abandoned
  12. Newark Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Broadfoot Sand & Gravel Co Inc · MSHA ID 2501022
    Abandoned
  13. North Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nebraska Credit Finance Corp · MSHA ID 2501121
    Abandoned
  14. Odessa
    Surface metal/non-metal · T&F Sand & Gravel Inc. · MSHA ID 2501061
    Abandoned
  15. ODESSA PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buffalo County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2500695
    Abandoned
  16. Ospray Lake
    Surface metal/non-metal · Farmers Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2500203
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Dredge #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carl Whitney Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2501059
    Abandoned
  18. PORTABLE DREDGE MINE #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · T & F Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2501054
    Abandoned
  19. Powerscreen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-Nebraska Aggregate Inc. · MSHA ID 2501304
    Abandoned
  20. SHELTON PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bruners Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2500200
    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 24
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 18
Gravel Pit 12
Disturbed Surface 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Sand Pit 1
Other counties in NebraskaAll 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.