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Abandoned mines › Pennsylvania
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Blair County, Pennsylvania

Blair County, Pennsylvania has 124 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1902–1987, including 3 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 21 problems in the county, 11 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 Blair 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)
124
Mine openings
3
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
11
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits15 quadrangle maps, published 1902–1987 21 OSMRE problems, 10 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 2.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    31 21.4%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    86 59.3%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    12 8.3%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    12 8.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems21 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Bells Gap Run Watershed P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Pending
Chestnut Flats P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Chestnut Flats P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Chestnut Flats P3 Water Problems In Reclamation
Conifers Coupon East P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Conifers Coupon East P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Conifers Coupon East P3 Water Problems In Reclamation
Glenwhite P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Glenwhite P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Glenwhite P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Glenwhite P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Glenwhite P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Glenwhite P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Glenwhite P3 Water Problems In Reclamation
Kerbaugh Road P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments In Reclamation
Pa - Blair - Fea P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Pa - Blair - Fea P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Sugar Run Gap P3 Water Problems In Reclamation
Sugar Run Gap P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Sugar Run Gap P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
West Buckhorn #3 P3 Gobs 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. Blair County
    Surface coal · Swistock Associates Coal Corp · MSHA ID 3605586
    Abandoned
  2. Blair County
    Surface coal · Swistock Associates Coal Corp · MSHA ID 3607519
    Abandoned
  3. Canoe Creek Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · New Enterprise Stone & Lime Company Inc · MSHA ID 3600194
    Abandoned
  4. Claysburg Works
    Facility metal/non-metal · General Refractories Company · MSHA ID 3605313
    Abandoned
  5. Crescent Brick Co Inc/Blair Clay Pr
    Facility metal/non-metal · Crescent Brick Company Inc · MSHA ID 3603468
    Abandoned
  6. East Loop Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · East Loop Sand Company · MSHA ID 3607617
    Abandoned
  7. Eldorado Stone Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eldorado Stone Company · MSHA ID 3600071
    Abandoned
  8. Frankstown Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · General Refractories Company · MSHA ID 3600093
    Abandoned
  9. Frankstown Sand Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Frankstown Sand Inc · MSHA ID 3603179
    Abandoned
  10. GRANNAS BROS. STONE & ASPHALT CO.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grannas Brothers Stone & Asphalt Company Inc · MSHA ID 3600631
    Abandoned
  11. Heritage #1
    Surface coal · Heritage Mining Company · MSHA ID 3606678
    Abandoned
  12. J L Hartman Company Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · J L Hartman Company Inc · MSHA ID 3600108
    Abandoned
  13. SPROUL LIME & STONE
    Surface metal/non-metal · New Enterprise Stone & Lime Company Inc · MSHA ID 3600234
    Abandoned
  14. Sproul Works
    Facility metal/non-metal · General Refractories Company · MSHA ID 3605333
    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
Quarry 33
Strip Mine 26
Quarry 14
Sand Pit 11
Clay Pit 10
P3 Water Problems 7
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
P3 Spoil Area 4
Sand Pit 4
Gravel Pit 3
Adit 3
Gravel Pit 3
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 3
Clay Pit 2
Disturbed Surface 2
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
Settling Pond 2
Tailings - Undifferentiated 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 1
P1 Subsidence 1
P1 Portals 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P3 Gobs 1
Other counties in PennsylvaniaAll 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.