Abandoned mines in South Carolina
South Carolina has 1,195 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1921–1994, including 4 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts), across 45 counties. MSHA's register carries 282 South Carolina mines with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.
Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps of South Carolina, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem, and every MSHA-registered mine with status Abandoned, by county. Each county page lists the named features and links every MSHA mine to its own record.
- Mapped mine features (USGS)
- 1,195
- Mine openings
- 4
- OSMRE problems unreclaimed
- 0
- MSHA mines marked abandoned
- 282
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4 0.3%Mine openingsshafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
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1 0.1%Prospect pits and trenchesshallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
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224 18.7%Mines and surface workingslabelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
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958 80.2%Quarries, gravel and borrow pitsconstruction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
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8 0.7%Dumps, tailings, spoil and gobwhat mining left above ground
| Feature type | Features |
|---|---|
| Clay Pit | 391 |
| Sand Pit | 162 |
| Disturbed Surface | 91 |
| Gravel Pit | 90 |
| Open Pit Mine or Quarry | 78 |
| Clay Pit | 72 |
| Sand Pit | 54 |
| Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated | 41 |
| Strip Mine | 37 |
| Quarry | 32 |
| Gravel Pit | 32 |
| Quarry | 32 |
| Borrow Pit | 26 |
| Borrow Pit | 10 |
| Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated | 9 |
| Open Pit Mine | 8 |
| Open Pit Mine or Quarry | 6 |
| Open Pit Mine | 4 |
| Mine Shaft | 4 |
| Tailings - Pond | 4 |
| Sand and Gravel Pit | 4 |
| Mine Dump | 2 |
| Tailings - Undifferentiated | 2 |
| Marl Pit | 1 |
| Quarry - Rock | 1 |
| Sand and Gravel Pit | 1 |
| Prospect Pit | 1 |
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, 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. Counties are assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method and every source are on the national page.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.