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Abandoned mines › South Carolina
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Spartanburg County, South Carolina

Spartanburg County, South Carolina has 13 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1947–1994; 1 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 15 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Spartanburg 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)
13
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
15
1 features carry a name0 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1947–1994 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
    1 7.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    12 92.3%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
M and R Quarry Quarry

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned15 on register
  1. BROWN # 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carolina Vermiculite Div-Va Vermiculite LLC · MSHA ID 3800596
    Abandoned
  2. BROWN'S SAND MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ray Brown Enterprises · MSHA ID 3800638
    Abandoned
  3. CHAPMAN SAND PLANT #5 RIVERBEND
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chapman Grading & Concrete Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800679
    Abandoned
  4. Chapman Sand Plant #6 & #7
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chapman Grading & Concrete Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800699
    Abandoned
  5. Fanny Youngs Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Patterson Vermiculite Company · MSHA ID 3800594
    Abandoned
  6. Lanford Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cogdill & Lawson Sand · MSHA ID 3800642
    Abandoned
  7. Moody Mines And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Moody Products Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800593
    Abandoned
  8. Morrow Sand Company Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morrow Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800666
    Abandoned
  9. PACOLET RIVER MINES
    Surface metal/non-metal · Little Acres Sand · MSHA ID 3800675
    Abandoned
  10. South Carolina Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 3800379
    Abandoned
  11. SPARTAN MINERALS MILL
    Facility metal/non-metal · Spartan Minerals Corp · MSHA ID 3800027
    Abandoned
  12. Spartanburg County Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · W R Grace & Company · MSHA ID 3800251
    Abandoned
  13. Sumner #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Enoree Minerals Corp · MSHA ID 3800623
    Abandoned
  14. Tyger River #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Metromont Materials Corp-Sand Division · MSHA ID 3800581
    Abandoned
  15. Tyger River Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Zupan Sand & Concrete Company Inc · MSHA ID 3800557
    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
Clay Pit 4
Quarry 4
Quarry 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Disturbed Surface 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.