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Abandoned mines › Ohio
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Franklin County, Ohio

Franklin County, Ohio has 56 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1943–1995. 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 Franklin 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)
56
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
13
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1943–1995 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
    20 35.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    36 64.3%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned13 on register
  1. BIG WALNUT SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gemini Construction Company · MSHA ID 3304361
    Abandoned
  2. Claycraft No 4-5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Claycraft Company · MSHA ID 3300542
    Abandoned
  3. COLUMBUS GRAVEL-319
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 3301385
    Abandoned
  4. Columbus Limestone Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Columbus Limestone Inc · MSHA ID 3302784
    Abandoned
  5. Columbus Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Agg Rok Materials Company · MSHA ID 3301508
    Abandoned
  6. Grove City Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · The National Lime & Stone Company · MSHA ID 3304692
    Abandoned
  7. Hilliard Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · The Olen Corporation · MSHA ID 3301446
    Abandoned
  8. Lockbourne Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shelly Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3301480
    Abandoned
  9. Lockbourne Plant #213
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Aggregates Corp · MSHA ID 3301392
    Abandoned
  10. S & S Aggregate - Plant No 15
    Surface metal/non-metal · S & S Aggregate · MSHA ID 3304146
    Abandoned
  11. Shadeville
    Surface metal/non-metal · The National Lime and Stone Company · MSHA ID 3304813
    Abandoned
  12. South Columbus Aggregate Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · The National Lime and Stone Company · MSHA ID 3302518
    Abandoned
  13. Westerville Industrial Park
    Surface metal/non-metal · L & M Excavators · MSHA ID 3304010
    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 16
Disturbed Surface 13
Gravel Pit 6
Quarry - Limestone 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
Quarry 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Quarry 1
Quarry - Limestone 1
Sand Pit 1
Clay Pit 1
Clay Pit 1
Other counties in OhioAll 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.