Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › Pennsylvania
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania

Sullivan County, Pennsylvania has 34 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1927–1969. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 20 problems in the county, 10 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 12 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Sullivan 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)
34
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
10
MSHA mines marked abandoned
12
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits6 quadrangle maps, published 1927–1969 20 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
    5 9.3%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    27 50.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    7 13.0%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 5.6%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    12 22.2%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems20 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Double Run P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Half Moone Swamp West P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Half Moone Swamp West P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Loyalsock Creek P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Pending
Murray Southwest P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Murray Southwest P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
White Ash P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
White Ash P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
White Ash P1 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
White Ash P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
White Ash #3 P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
White Ash #3 P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments In Reclamation
White Ash #3 P1 Portals Reclamation Pending
White Ash #3 P1 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
White Ash #3 P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
White Ash #3 P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
White Ash #3 P3 Mine Opening In Reclamation
White Ash #3 P3 Water Problems In Reclamation
White Ash #3 P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
White Ash #3 P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed

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 Abandoned12 on register
  1. Black Nugget
    Surface coal · Capitol Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 3608714
    Abandoned
  2. Common Sense #1
    Surface coal · Bernice Mining & Contracting Inc · MSHA ID 3607377
    Abandoned
  3. Common Sense #2
    Surface coal · Bernice Mining & Contracting Inc · MSHA ID 3607493
    Abandoned
  4. Common Sense Plant
    Facility coal · Capitol Coal Co. Inc. · MSHA ID 3607376
    Abandoned
  5. Falcon Coal & Construction Co
    Facility coal · Falcon Coal & Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3605217
    Abandoned
  6. Locey Coal Company
    Facility coal · Lacey Coal Company · MSHA ID 3601619
    Abandoned
  7. Locey Strip
    Surface coal · Lacey Coal Company · MSHA ID 3601618
    Abandoned
  8. Louise No 1 Strip
    Surface coal · S B P Coal Company · MSHA ID 3601703
    Abandoned
  9. Louise No 4 Strip
    Surface coal · S B P Coal Company · MSHA ID 3604390
    Abandoned
  10. Oliveri Pit No 1
    Surface coal · Quality Resources Inc · MSHA ID 3606226
    Abandoned
  11. Pigeon Creek Strip
    Surface coal · P & M Mining Company · MSHA ID 3606523
    Abandoned
  12. Pigeon Creek Strip Mine
    Surface coal · Sullivan County Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 3605647
    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 20
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Gravel Pit 6
P3 Water Problems 3
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 3
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 2
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 2
P1 Vertical Openings 2
P1 Portals 2
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 1
P2 Portals 1
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 1
Shale Pit 1
P1 Subsidence 1
P1 Hazardous Water Bodies 1
P3 Mine Opening 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.