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Abandoned mines › Tennessee
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Knox County, Tennessee

Knox County, Tennessee has 111 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1935–1992, including 2 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 10 of the features carry a name on the map. 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 Knox 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)
111
Mine openings
2
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
10 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1935–1992 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
    2 1.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    74 66.7%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    28 25.2%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    6 5.4%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 0.9%
Named features on the maps10 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Marble Quarry area
Marble Quarry area
Marble Quarry
Marble Quarry area
Marble Quarry area
Marble Quarry area
Meades Quarry Quarry area
Neubert Quarry Quarry
Zinc Mine Shaft
Zinc Mine Shaft

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 Abandoned22 on register
  1. ASBURY QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Marbledale Crushed Stone · MSHA ID 4003050
    Abandoned
  2. Cemex USA
    Surface metal/non-metal · R. Lafferty & Son, LLC · MSHA ID 4003589
    Abandoned
  3. Creswell Brothers Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Creswell Sand & Gravel Ltd · MSHA ID 4002124
    Abandoned
  4. East Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Claiborne Hauling LLC · MSHA ID 4003324
    Abandoned
  5. Forks Of River
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tenn Luttrell Company · MSHA ID 4000012
    Abandoned
  6. GRANOX QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tennessee Marble Company · MSHA ID 4003154
    Abandoned
  7. JEFFERSON CITY MILL
    Facility metal/non-metal · Savage Zinc Inc · MSHA ID 4000866
    Abandoned
  8. Knoxville Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 4001293
    Abandoned
  9. Mascot Sand Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · American Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 4000942
    Abandoned
  10. Midway Quarry - Tunnel Project
    Underground metal/non-metal · Blue Water Industries · MSHA ID 4003570
    Abandoned
  11. Millertown
    Surface metal/non-metal · General Shale Brick, Inc. · MSHA ID 4000191
    Abandoned
  12. Mine Road Operations
    Surface metal/non-metal · Claiborne Hauling, LLC · MSHA ID 4003445
    Abandoned
  13. MOSSY CREEK MINING, LLC
    Underground metal/non-metal · Mossy Creek Mining Llc · MSHA ID 4000607
    Abandoned
  14. NEW MARKET MINE
    Underground metal/non-metal · Asarco Inc · MSHA ID 4000606
    Abandoned
  15. Plant No 1
    Facility metal/non-metal · Williams Lime Manufacturing Company · MSHA ID 4001805
    Abandoned
  16. Plant No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Williams Lime Manufacturing Company · MSHA ID 4000129
    Abandoned
  17. Sand Dredge And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 4000800
    Abandoned
  18. Sand Machine No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Limestone Company Inc · MSHA ID 4000776
    Abandoned
  19. Shalite Corp Shalite Mine & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shalite Corp · MSHA ID 4000203
    Abandoned
  20. STRIPPING CREW
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Constr. Materials, L.P. · MSHA ID 4003071
    Abandoned
  21. Transfer Terminal 1
    Facility coal · Burkhart Quarry & Supplies Inc · MSHA ID 4002483
    Abandoned
  22. Vulcan Materials Co City Qy & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vulcan Materials Company · MSHA ID 4000111
    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 48
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 19
Quarry 14
Quarry 11
Tailings - Pond 6
Strip Mine 3
Mine Shaft 2
Chert Pit 2
Disturbed Surface 2
Gravel Pit 1
Tipple 1
Strip Mine 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Other counties in TennesseeAll 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.