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Abandoned mines › Oklahoma
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ottawa County, Oklahoma

Ottawa County, Oklahoma has 605 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1949–1982, including 192 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 19 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 26 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ottawa 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)
605
Mine openings
192
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
26
19 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1949–1982 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
    192 31.7%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    49 8.1%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    23 3.8%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    341 56.4%
Named features on the maps19 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine area
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine area
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine
Tripoli Mine Open Pit Mine

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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned26 on register
  1. BLUE GOOSE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bingham Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 3401254
    Abandoned
  2. Boyd'S Excavation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyd'S Excavation · MSHA ID 3401752
    Abandoned
  3. Bradshaw Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bradshaw Materials · MSHA ID 3401566
    Abandoned
  4. Bryan Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bryan Chat Company · MSHA ID 3400911
    Abandoned
  5. Central Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clarkland Inc · MSHA ID 3400426
    Abandoned
  6. District No 1 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ottawa County · MSHA ID 3401717
    Abandoned
  7. District No 2 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ottawa County · MSHA ID 3401063
    Abandoned
  8. District No 3 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ottawa County · MSHA ID 3401064
    Abandoned
  9. Gordon Pile
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bingham Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3401914
    Abandoned
  10. HORN #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Horn Bros Rock & Chat · MSHA ID 3401796
    Abandoned
  11. Kunshek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kunshek Chat Company · MSHA ID 3401024
    Abandoned
  12. Mcbee Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Earnie Graham Chat Company · MSHA ID 3401147
    Abandoned
  13. Miami #30
    Surface metal/non-metal · Midwest Minerals Inc · MSHA ID 3400598
    Abandoned
  14. Miami #31
    Surface metal/non-metal · Midwest Minerals Inc · MSHA ID 3401435
    Abandoned
  15. Midwestern Pit No 1 & 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Midwestern Mineral · MSHA ID 3400913
    Abandoned
  16. NELSON BROS. QUARRIES, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nelson Brothers Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 3401570
    Abandoned
  17. Ottawa County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ottawa County · MSHA ID 3400906
    Abandoned
  18. PIONEER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pioneer Rock & Chat Inc · MSHA ID 3400818
    Abandoned
  19. Quapaw Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · City Of Miami · MSHA ID 3401546
    Abandoned
  20. R & B MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · J C C Trucking Inc · MSHA ID 3401871
    Abandoned
  21. RYUN PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-State Aggregates · MSHA ID 3401620
    Abandoned
  22. ST LOUIS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Flint Rock Products · MSHA ID 3401819
    Abandoned
  23. Teeter Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Teeter'S Asphalt & Materials · MSHA ID 3400931
    Abandoned
  24. Treco Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Treco Sales Inc · MSHA ID 3401534
    Abandoned
  25. TRIPOLI
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Tripoli Inc · MSHA ID 3400288
    Abandoned
  26. Western
    Surface metal/non-metal · Williams Diversified Materials, Inc. · MSHA ID 3401810
    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
Tailings - Undifferentiated 268
Mine Shaft 192
Mine Dump 65
Open Pit Mine 35
Gravel Pit 12
Gravel Pit 11
Disturbed Surface - Pit 8
Tailings - Pond 8
Disturbed Surface 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Strip Mine 2
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.