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Abandoned mines › New York
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Herkimer County, New York

Herkimer County, New York has 115 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1943–1989. 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 Herkimer 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)
115
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits22 quadrangle maps, published 1943–1989 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
    76 66.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    39 33.9%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned21 on register
  1. Barneveld Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Heidelberg Materials Northeast-NY LLC · MSHA ID 3001128
    Abandoned
  2. BECKWITH'S PIT - PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Herkimer County Highway Department · MSHA ID 3002972
    Abandoned
  3. Beckwiths Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Donahue Trucking · MSHA ID 3003403
    Abandoned
  4. Bienick Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Aggregates New York, Inc. · MSHA ID 3002526
    Abandoned
  5. Bono Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferdula Excavating · MSHA ID 3002618
    Abandoned
  6. Camden Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Camden Highway Dept · MSHA ID 3002202
    Abandoned
  7. Glass Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Glass Bagging Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 3003021
    Abandoned
  8. Golf Road Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Frankfort · MSHA ID 3002174
    Abandoned
  9. Lyles Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · F Edward Lyle · MSHA ID 3002272
    Abandoned
  10. Middleville Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Aggregates New York LLC. · MSHA ID 3000039
    Abandoned
  11. Millers Mill Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferdula Gravel Products Inc · MSHA ID 3002541
    Abandoned
  12. POLAND SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roger'S Fence Company Inc · MSHA ID 3003160
    Abandoned
  13. Portable Cage 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Poland Sand & Gravel LLC · MSHA ID 3003849
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Seco 6x16 Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferdula Gravel Products Inc · MSHA ID 3003613
    Abandoned
  15. Porteck 271A #178-271A-3040-95
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jablonski Excavating, Inc. · MSHA ID 3003815
    Abandoned
  16. Rifenburg Herkimer Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rifenburg Construction Inc. · MSHA ID 3004003
    Abandoned
  17. Town of Salisbury-Sand & Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town of Salisbury Highway Dept · MSHA ID 3003712
    Abandoned
  18. Traxel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Ava Highway Dept · MSHA ID 3002201
    Abandoned
  19. Volo Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joseph A Volo Inc · MSHA ID 3002271
    Abandoned
  20. WEAKLEY HAULING PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weakley Hauling · MSHA ID 3003220
    Abandoned
  21. West Winfield Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · West Winfield Sand & Gravel Corp · MSHA ID 3002324
    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 70
Gravel Pit 21
Gravel Pit 7
Disturbed Surface 4
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
Sand Pit 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Quarry 1
Sand Pit 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.