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Abandoned mines › Ohio
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Morgan County, Ohio

Morgan County, Ohio has 108 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1960–1994. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 25 problems in the county, 9 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 7 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Morgan 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)
108
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
9
MSHA mines marked abandoned
7
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1960–1994 25 OSMRE problems, 16 reclaimed 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
    4 3.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    102 76.7%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    5 3.8%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 3.8%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    2 1.5%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    15 11.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems25 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Bristol Cemetery P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Bristol Cemetery P3 Other In Reclamation
Burr Oak P3 Other In Reclamation
Campsite A P3 Other In Reclamation
Campsite C P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Campsite C P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Campsite C P3 Other In Reclamation
Dry Run P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Dry Run P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Dry Run P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Dry Run P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Dry Run P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Hanson Subsidence P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Possum Hollow East P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Possum Hollow East P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Possum Hollow East P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Possum Hollow East P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Possum Hollow East P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Rose Farm P1 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Rose Farm P1 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Rose Farm P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Rose Farm P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Rose Farm P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Sr 83 P3 Other In Reclamation
Twin City P3 Other Reclamation Pending

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned7 on register
  1. CHESTERHILL STONE CO. (PLANT #2)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chesterhill Stone Company · MSHA ID 3301667
    Abandoned
  2. New Tech #1
    Underground metal/non-metal · New Tech Oil Company · MSHA ID 3303897
    Abandoned
  3. Octad Research Facility
    Facility coal · Icf Kaiser Engineers Inc · MSHA ID 3304276
    Abandoned
  4. S & S Aggregate, Plant 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · S & S Aggregate · MSHA ID 3304498
    Abandoned
  5. Sidwell Meigs Strip
    Surface coal · Sidwell Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 3302681
    Abandoned
  6. Sidwell Quarry #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sidwell Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 3302596
    Abandoned
  7. York Strip Mine
    Surface coal · Southern Ohio Coal Company · MSHA ID 3302136
    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
Strip Mine 65
Disturbed Surface 36
P3 Other 6
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
P1 Subsidence 2
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
P3 Gobs 2
P1 Clogged Streams 2
Quarry 1
P3 Water Problems 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P2 Portals 1
Settling Pond 1
P2 Dangerous Impoundments 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
P2 Dangerous Slides 1
P1 Portals 1
P1 Vertical Openings 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.