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Abandoned mines › Nebraska
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cass County, Nebraska

Cass County, Nebraska has 172 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1935–1984; 6 of the features carry a name on the map. 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 Cass 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)
172
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
6 features carry a name0 prospect pits13 quadrangle maps, published 1935–1984 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
    23 13.4%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    149 86.6%
Named features on the maps6 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Ace Hill Quarry Quarry area
King Hill Quarry Quarry
King Hill Quarry Quarry
King Hill Quarry Quarry
Queen Hill Quarry Quarry area
Tobins Quarry Quarry area

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 Abandoned21 on register
  1. Ash Grove Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · City Wide Rock & Excavating Company Inc · MSHA ID 2501068
    Abandoned
  2. Becker Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Becker Quarry Company · MSHA ID 2500025
    Abandoned
  3. Buccaneer Bay Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · City Wide Rock & Excavating Company Inc · MSHA ID 2500935
    Abandoned
  4. Cedar Creek Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hobbs Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2500430
    Abandoned
  5. Furlong Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · United Rock Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2500946
    Abandoned
  6. Hopper Brothers South Bend Quarry A
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hopper Brothers Quarries · MSHA ID 2500012
    Abandoned
  7. Kerford Limestone Company
    Underground metal/non-metal · Kerford Limestone Company · MSHA ID 2500017
    Abandoned
  8. Kerford Open Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kerford Limestone Company · MSHA ID 2501006
    Abandoned
  9. Le Mieux Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Le Mieux Quarries · MSHA ID 2500926
    Abandoned
  10. Nehawka Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Corp · MSHA ID 2500145
    Abandoned
  11. PCS PHOSPHATE COMPANY INC
    Facility metal/non-metal · PCS Phosphate Company Inc · MSHA ID 2500554
    Abandoned
  12. Pit #3 West Cullom
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lyman-Richey Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2501254
    Abandoned
  13. Pit #4 East Oreapolis
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lyman-Richey Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2501245
    Abandoned
  14. PIT #5 CULLOM
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lyman-Richey Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2500280
    Abandoned
  15. Pit #8 Oreapolis
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lyman-Richey Sand & Gravel Co · MSHA ID 2500735
    Abandoned
  16. Riverview Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Finalgrade Construction and Conservation · MSHA ID 2501310
    Abandoned
  17. South Bend Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2500336
    Abandoned
  18. Splitt Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B-Y Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2501260
    Abandoned
  19. Weeping Water Mine And Mill
    Underground metal/non-metal · American Cyanamid Company · MSHA ID 2500020
    Abandoned
  20. Weeping Water North Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 2500934
    Abandoned
  21. Weeping Water Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 2500011
    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
Quarry 119
Quarry 18
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 12
Disturbed Surface 7
Clay Pit 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Clay Pit 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
Gravel Pit 1
Sand Pit 1
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.