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Abandoned mines › Oklahoma
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Nowata County, Oklahoma

Nowata County, Oklahoma has 80 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1970–1982. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 18 problems in the county, 18 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 14 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Nowata 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)
80
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
18
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1970–1982 18 OSMRE problems, 0 reclaimed 1 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    21 21.4%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    59 60.2%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 2.0%
  4. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    16 16.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems18 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Alluwe P2 Hazardous Water Bodies In Reclamation
Alluwe P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
Bowlin Spring P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Bowlin Spring P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Bowlin Spring P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
Bowlin Spring P2 Hazardous Water Bodies In Reclamation
West Fork Lightening Creek P1 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
West Fork Lightening Creek P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
West Fork Lightening Creek P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
West Fork Lightening Creek P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments In Reclamation
West Fork Lightening Creek P1 Hazardous Water Bodies In Reclamation
West Fork Lightening Creek P1 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
West Fork Lightening Creek P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
West Fork Lightening Creek P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
West Fork Lightening Creek P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
West Fork Lightening Creek P2 Hazardous Water Bodies In Reclamation
West Fork Lightening Creek P2 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Pending
West Fork Lightening Creek P2 Industrial/Residential Waste In Reclamation

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 Abandoned14 on register
  1. Black Diamond
    Surface coal · Fuel Dynamics Inc · MSHA ID 3400904
    Abandoned and Sealed
  2. H & H
    Surface coal · Brakefield Equipment Inc · MSHA ID 3402081
    Abandoned
  3. Hamilton No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · G C B Leasing Inc · MSHA ID 3400995
    Abandoned
  4. Morton Mine Site 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morton Materials · MSHA ID 3402099
    Abandoned
  5. Mynal Mine No 1
    Surface coal · Tele-Systems Inc · MSHA ID 3400845
    Abandoned
  6. Nowata County Mine
    Surface coal · Brakefield Equipment Inc · MSHA ID 3401756
    Abandoned
  7. NOWATA PITS DIST #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nowata County · MSHA ID 3401230
    Abandoned
  8. NOWATA PITS DIST #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nowata County · MSHA ID 3401233
    Abandoned
  9. NOWATA PITS DIST #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nowata County · MSHA ID 3401182
    Abandoned
  10. Osage No 1 Mine
    Surface coal · M J Lee Construction Company · MSHA ID 3401082
    Abandoned
  11. Panther Creek Mine
    Surface coal · Western Mining Company Of Oklahoma · MSHA ID 3400883
    Abandoned
  12. Parks-Mine
    Surface coal · Western Continental Of Oklahoma Inc · MSHA ID 3400457
    Abandoned
  13. Portable #3 4300 Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · APAC-Central, Inc · MSHA ID 3400025
    Abandoned
  14. Redman No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · Redman Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 3401148
    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 34
Strip Mine 15
Shale Pit 12
Quarry 7
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 6
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 4
Disturbed Surface 3
Quarry 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 3
P1 Hazardous Water Bodies 2
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 2
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
P2 Industrial/Residential Waste 2
Gravel Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Sand Pit 1
Other counties in OklahomaAll 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.