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Abandoned mines › Ohio
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ross County, Ohio

Ross County, Ohio has 61 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1917–1985. MSHA's register carries 15 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ross 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)
61
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
15
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1917–1985 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 32.8%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    41 67.2%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned15 on register
  1. Barbee Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ohio Basic Minerals Inc. · MSHA ID 3304607
    Abandoned
  2. BEST SAND CORPORATION
    Surface metal/non-metal · Best Sand Corp · MSHA ID 3300359
    Abandoned
  3. Chillicothe Plant #1404
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shelly Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 3304504
    Abandoned
  4. G & J Asphalt & Materials Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · G & J Asphalt & Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3303889
    Abandoned
  5. Melvin Stone Ross County Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · The Melvin Stone Company LLC · MSHA ID 3304674
    Abandoned
  6. Ohio Asphaltic Limestone Corporation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ohio Asphaltic Limestone Corp · MSHA ID 3300131
    Abandoned
  7. PARRY SAND & GRAVEL
    Facility metal/non-metal · Parry Company Inc · MSHA ID 3302698
    Abandoned
  8. Plant A-3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blazer Materials Corp · MSHA ID 3301422
    Abandoned
  9. R & R Aggregates Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · R & R Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 3304063
    Abandoned
  10. ROSS COUNTY GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ross County Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3304228
    Abandoned
  11. Ross County Sand & Gravel Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ross County Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3304636
    Abandoned
  12. Shelly Materials Inc Chillicoth
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shelly Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3304233
    Abandoned
  13. Three Locks Construction Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Three Locks Construction Company · MSHA ID 3301410
    Abandoned
  14. Three Locks Gravel Co.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Three Locks Gravel Co. · MSHA ID 3304415
    Abandoned
  15. Tow Path Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tow Path Ready Mix · MSHA ID 3304531
    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 21
Disturbed Surface 13
Gravel Pit 10
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
Strip Mine 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 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.