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Abandoned mines › New Jersey
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ocean County, New Jersey

Ocean County, New Jersey has 279 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1942–1995; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 16 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ocean 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)
279
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
2 features carry a name0 prospect pits21 quadrangle maps, published 1942–1995 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
    147 52.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    132 47.3%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
New Jersey Pulverizing Co Gravel Pit area
New Jersey Pulverizing Co Open Pit Mine or Quarry

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 Abandoned16 on register
  1. Atlantic Gravel Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · Atlantic Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2800886
    Abandoned
  2. Cedar Bridge Sand Operation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Phoenix Pinelands Corporation · MSHA ID 2800717
    Abandoned
  3. Fisher Sand & Gravel Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fisher Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2800505
    Abandoned
  4. Heritage Minerals Incorporated
    Facility metal/non-metal · Heritage Minerals Inc · MSHA ID 2800719
    Abandoned
  5. Johnson Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Johnson Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2800619
    Abandoned
  6. Lacey Natural Sand LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lacey Natural Sand LLC · MSHA ID 2801006
    Abandoned
  7. Lacey Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · French Contracting Company · MSHA ID 2800943
    Abandoned
  8. Lakehurst Mine And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Glidden-Durkee Division Of Sem Corp · MSHA ID 2800450
    Abandoned
  9. Lakewood Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clayton Sand Company · MSHA ID 2800870
    Abandoned
  10. Nord Ilmenite
    Facility metal/non-metal · Nord Ilmenite Corp · MSHA ID 2800987
    Abandoned
  11. PHOENIX PINELANDS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Phoenix Pinelands Corp · MSHA ID 2800716
    Abandoned
  12. Plant No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brick-Wall Corp · MSHA ID 2800485
    Abandoned
  13. Plumsted Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · E M E Inc · MSHA ID 2800998
    Abandoned
  14. Shoreline Sand & Gravel LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shoreline Sand & Gravel LLC · MSHA ID 2801013
    Abandoned
  15. Staffordville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bob Kalsch Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2800550
    Abandoned
  16. Stavola Sand & Gravel Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stavola Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2800471
    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 63
Disturbed Surface 63
Borrow Pit 33
Gravel Pit 30
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 25
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 19
Borrow Pit 15
Gravel Pit 11
Quarry 7
Quarry 5
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Clay Pit 2
Sand Pit 1
Other counties in New JerseyAll 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.