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Abandoned mines › Rhode Island
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Washington County, Rhode Island

Washington County, Rhode Island has 78 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1921–2001. MSHA's register carries 24 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)
78
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits13 quadrangle maps, published 1921–2001 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    22 28.2%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    56 71.8%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned24 on register
  1. 30 X 42 PORTABLE #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cherenzia Excavation Inc · MSHA ID 3700188
    Abandoned
  2. Armand Houston Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Armand Houston Excavating · MSHA ID 3700177
    Abandoned
  3. Armetta LLC - Bradford Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Armetta LLC · MSHA ID 3700211
    Abandoned
  4. Armetta LLC - Richmond Site
    Surface metal/non-metal · Armetta LLC · MSHA ID 3700222
    Abandoned
  5. Blue Westerly Granite Inc Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Westerly Granite Inc · MSHA ID 3700172
    Abandoned
  6. C & G Construction Inc Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · C & G Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3700176
    Abandoned
  7. Coop Farm
    Surface metal/non-metal · Coop Farm · MSHA ID 3700221
    Abandoned
  8. Diso-Mills Sand & Gravel Co Mine & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Charlestown Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3700178
    Abandoned
  9. Dry Bridge Sand & Stone Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dry Bridge Sand & Stone Inc · MSHA ID 3700189
    Abandoned
  10. Dunns Corner Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · James Romanella & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 3700066
    Abandoned
  11. Frank Andrews Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · C A Hopkins & Son Excavating Company · MSHA ID 3700175
    Abandoned
  12. Morrone Trucking Sand & Gravel Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morrone Trucking Sand & Gravel Inc. · MSHA ID 3700201
    Abandoned
  13. Plant 8
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rawson Materials · MSHA ID 3700225
    Abandoned
  14. PORTABLE CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · CHERENZIA EXCAVATION, INC. · MSHA ID 3700233
    Abandoned
  15. Quarry Road Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sacco Enterprises Inc. · MSHA ID 3700204
    Abandoned
  16. Queen's Valley Farm
    Surface metal/non-metal · Queen's Valley Farm · MSHA ID 3700224
    Abandoned
  17. Richmond Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Hale Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3700124
    Abandoned
  18. RICO CORP. GRAVEL BANK
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rico Corp · MSHA ID 3700190
    Abandoned
  19. Slocum Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rhode Island Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3700141
    Abandoned
  20. Smithfield Peat Company Pit And Mil
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smithfield Peat Company Inc · MSHA ID 3700158
    Abandoned
  21. Sprague Farm Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sprague Farm Inc · MSHA ID 3700210
    Abandoned
  22. White Rock Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Westerly Highway Department · MSHA ID 3700173
    Abandoned
  23. White Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rawson Materials · MSHA ID 3700192
    Abandoned
  24. Wood River Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · J Santoro Inc · MSHA ID 3700191
    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/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 40
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 10
Disturbed Surface 9
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Disturbed Surface - Pit 5
Gravel Pit 2
Quarry 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Quarry 1
Gravel Pit 1
Sand Pit 1
Other counties in Rhode IslandAll 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.