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Abandoned mines › South Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Lexington County, South Carolina

Lexington County, South Carolina has 59 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1944–1986. MSHA's register carries 22 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Lexington 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)
59
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1944–1986 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
    23 39.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    36 61.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned22 on register
  1. B & T Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & T Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800624
    Abandoned
  2. Bledsoe Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & T Sand Co Inc · MSHA ID 3800659
    Abandoned
  3. Bowen Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lexington Sand Company · MSHA ID 3800578
    Abandoned
  4. BOWERS LEASING COMPANY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bowers Leasing Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800669
    Abandoned
  5. Columbia Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Twin Pines Minerals LLC · MSHA ID 3800756
    Abandoned
  6. CORLEY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boral Bricks Inc · MSHA ID 3800175
    Abandoned
  7. COTTON BRANCH MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · J B Rawl Inc · MSHA ID 3800668
    Abandoned
  8. Davis Brothers Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Davis Brothers Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800377
    Abandoned
  9. Edmund Sand
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bluegrass Materials Company, LLC · MSHA ID 3800662
    Abandoned
  10. Foster Dixiana Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rea Construction Company · MSHA ID 3800661
    Abandoned
  11. Gilbert Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · K E Shealy & Son Company · MSHA ID 3800548
    Abandoned
  12. Lexington County Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · Richtex Corp · MSHA ID 3800088
    Abandoned
  13. Lexington Mine And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Guignard Brick Works · MSHA ID 3800298
    Abandoned
  14. RED BANK
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carolina Materials Corp · MSHA ID 3800652
    Abandoned
  15. Ricard Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wilson Brothers Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800654
    Abandoned
  16. Schuler Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · American Materials Company LLC · MSHA ID 3800124
    Abandoned
  17. Shuler Mine And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Columbia Silica Sand Inc · MSHA ID 3800378
    Abandoned
  18. Silica Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Foster-Dixiana Sand Inc · MSHA ID 3800210
    Abandoned
  19. South Congaree Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Congaree Sand Inc · MSHA ID 3800524
    Abandoned
  20. Summit Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Herbert Anderson Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3800211
    Abandoned
  21. TINDAL MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Materials Company LLC · MSHA ID 3800590
    Abandoned
  22. Toms Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · C. R. Jackson, Inc. · MSHA ID 3800734
    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
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 22
Sand Pit 15
Clay Pit 9
Sand Pit 5
Gravel Pit 4
Clay Pit 2
Disturbed Surface 1
Quarry 1
Other counties in South CarolinaAll 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.