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Abandoned mines › New York
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cortland County, New York

Cortland County, New York has 44 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1943–1978. MSHA's register carries 13 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cortland 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)
44
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
13
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1943–1978 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
    28 63.6%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    16 36.4%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned13 on register
  1. CEC 24X36 JAW, #15
    Surface metal/non-metal · ADHAN PIPING CO INC · MSHA ID 3003586
    Abandoned
  2. Compagni Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Economy Paving Company · MSHA ID 3002207
    Abandoned
  3. CORTLAND READY MIX, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cortland Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 3000843
    Abandoned
  4. CUYLER HIGHWAY MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · TOWN OF CUYLER · MSHA ID 3003396
    Abandoned
  5. El-Jay Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cortland County Highway Department · MSHA ID 3002605
    Abandoned
  6. Homer Materials & South Homer Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Suit-Kote Corporation · MSHA ID 3000838
    Abandoned
  7. Kolman Screen #164
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cortland County Highway Department · MSHA ID 3003239
    Abandoned
  8. Mc Connell Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Economy Paving Company · MSHA ID 3002480
    Abandoned
  9. Mc Connells Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Cortlandville · MSHA ID 3002028
    Abandoned
  10. SHERMAN RD PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · OTTENSCHOT CONST. CO. INC. · MSHA ID 3003426
    Abandoned
  11. Summerville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Cortlandville · MSHA ID 3002341
    Abandoned
  12. Taylor Valley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stone Kote Sand and Gravel Products · MSHA ID 3003673
    Abandoned
  13. Willet Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · T & C Mobile Home and Construction Svc LLC · MSHA ID 3003868
    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 26
Gravel Pit 10
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 6
Disturbed Surface 2
Other counties in New YorkAll 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.