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Abandoned mines › New York
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Erie County, New York

Erie County, New York has 107 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1948–1979, including 3 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). MSHA's register carries 23 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Erie 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)
107
Mine openings
3
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
23
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits23 quadrangle maps, published 1948–1979 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
    3 2.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 3.7%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    100 93.5%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned23 on register
  1. BARTON ROAD QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buffalo Crushed Stone Inc. · MSHA ID 3000068
    Abandoned
  2. Boston Valley Clay Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boston Valley Pottery Co · MSHA ID 3000283
    Abandoned
  3. Buffalo Perlite Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Buffalo Perlite · MSHA ID 3002574
    Abandoned
  4. CHAFFEE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gernatt Asphalt Products Inc · MSHA ID 3002296
    Abandoned
  5. Clarence Center Mine
    Facility metal/non-metal · National Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 3000597
    Abandoned
  6. Clarence Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clarence Sand & Gravel Div/Clarence Mtrials Corp · MSHA ID 3000829
    Abandoned
  7. Como Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · New Enterprise Stone and Lime Co., Inc. · MSHA ID 3000041
    Abandoned
  8. Eastern Limestone Operation
    Facility metal/non-metal · United States Steel Corp · MSHA ID 3002134
    Abandoned
  9. GENESEE NORTH GRAVEL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · MJJ PROPERTY MANAGEMENT LLC · MSHA ID 3004072
    Abandoned
  10. Genesee Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pine Hill Concrete Mix Corp · MSHA ID 3001216
    Abandoned
  11. Hagerer Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Olivieri & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 3002586
    Abandoned
  12. Jamison Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lafarge North America Inc · MSHA ID 3003339
    Abandoned
  13. Jones Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pine Hill Concrete Mix Corp · MSHA ID 3001217
    Abandoned
  14. Kleeman K078.0139
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cold Spring Construction Company · MSHA ID 3004085
    Abandoned
  15. Kleemann Jaw Crusher 110#912
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cold Spring Construction Co · MSHA ID 3004064
    Abandoned
  16. LANCASTER PLANT E
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lafarge North America Incorporated · MSHA ID 3000947
    Abandoned
  17. Mauls Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur H Maul & Son Company · MSHA ID 3001123
    Abandoned
  18. Orchard Park
    Surface metal/non-metal · Olivieri & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 3000285
    Abandoned
  19. Sardinia Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gernatt Asphalt Products Inc · MSHA ID 3002718
    Abandoned
  20. Sterling Pit Or Sterling Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pine Hill Concrete Mix Corp · MSHA ID 3001574
    Abandoned
  21. Waterman Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gernatt Asphalt Products, Inc. · MSHA ID 3003854
    Abandoned
  22. Will Rogers
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lardon Construction Corp. · MSHA ID 3004126
    Abandoned
  23. Woodlawn Slag
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buffalo Crushed Stone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3002786
    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 69
Gravel Pit 19
Quarry 6
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Quarry 2
Mine Shaft 2
Open Pit Mine 1
Adit 1
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.