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Abandoned mines › Ohio
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Washington County, Ohio

Washington County, Ohio has 116 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1957–1994, including 6 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 4 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 19 problems in the county, 11 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Washington 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)
116
Mine openings
6
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
11
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
4 features carry a name0 prospect pits13 quadrangle maps, published 1957–1994 19 OSMRE problems, 8 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
    10 7.4%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    71 52.6%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    35 25.9%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    7 5.2%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    12 8.9%
Named features on the maps4 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Slag Pit Slag Pile area
Slag Pit Slag Pile area
Slag Pit Slag Pile area
Slag Pit Slag Pile area

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems19 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Acadia P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
B & N P1 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Bear Run P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Big Run P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Coal Run/s.r. #60 P2 Dangerous Slides In Reclamation
Elba P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Elba P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Kilmer Southwest P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Lower Salem P1 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Lower Salem P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Pending
Lower Salem P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Macksburg North P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Moss Run Washington Co P1 Portals Reclamation Pending
Moss Run Washington Co P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Moss Run Washington Co P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Seven Ranges P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Warner P1 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Warner P2 Clogged Stream Lands In Reclamation
Warner P3 Spoil Area 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 Abandoned19 on register
  1. Appalachian Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Turner Mining Group · MSHA ID 3304769
    Abandoned
  2. Briggs Sand & Gravel Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Briggs Sand & Gravel Inc. · MSHA ID 3301677
    Abandoned
  3. C A M Co Wash County
    Surface coal · C A M Company · MSHA ID 3304116
    Abandoned
  4. Chesterhill Stone Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chesterhill Stone Company · MSHA ID 3303982
    Abandoned
  5. Coprolite Sand & Gravel Corp Devola Plan
    Surface metal/non-metal · Coprolite Sand & Gravel Corp · MSHA ID 3301683
    Abandoned
  6. GRIMES SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grimes Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3304268
    Abandoned
  7. Guernsey Limestone Company Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Guernsey Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 3300355
    Abandoned
  8. Marietta Dock
    Facility coal · B & N Coal Inc · MSHA ID 3302487
    Abandoned
  9. MARK WILLIAMS BLACKTOP CO., INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mark Williams Blacktop Company Inc · MSHA ID 3304206
    Abandoned
  10. Muskingum River Gravel Company Plant #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Muskingum River Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3303695
    Abandoned
  11. Orange Tipple
    Facility coal · Orange Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 3301359
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Washscreen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shelly Materials Inc. · MSHA ID 3304806
    Abandoned
  13. Reno
    Surface metal/non-metal · Marietta Industrial Enterprises Inc. · MSHA ID 3304758
    Abandoned
  14. Riverside Bulk Terminal
    Underground coal · Marietta Industrial Enterprises, Inc. · MSHA ID 3304667
    Abandoned
  15. S & S Aggregate
    Surface metal/non-metal · S & S Aggregate · MSHA ID 3302007
    Abandoned
  16. Union Slag #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Union Slag Corp · MSHA ID 3302611
    Abandoned
  17. Warner Strip
    Surface coal · Peaker Run Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 3302623
    Abandoned
  18. Washington County Auger #I
    Surface coal · Leishman Auger Mining · MSHA ID 3304150
    Abandoned
  19. Willow Island Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shelly Materials Inc · MSHA ID 3304444
    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 61
Gravel Pit 11
Disturbed Surface 9
Quarry 8
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 7
Adit 6
Gravel Pit 4
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 4
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
Slag Pile 4
P3 Spoil Area 3
P1 Clogged Stream Lands 3
P1 Portals 2
Clay Pit 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
P2 Vertical Openings 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
P2 Portals 1
P2 Dangerous Slides 1
P1 Subsidence 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.