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Abandoned mines › Tennessee
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Rhea County, Tennessee

Rhea County, Tennessee has 84 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1909–1990, including 13 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 2 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 13 problems in the county, 12 of them not yet reclaimed. 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 Rhea 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)
84
Mine openings
13
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
12
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
2 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1909–1990 13 OSMRE problems, 1 reclaimed 5 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
    17 17.5%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    54 55.7%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    15 15.5%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    6 6.2%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    4 4.1%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    1 1.0%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Henderson Mill Mill Site
Rector Mine Open Pit Mine

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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems13 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Cumberland Springs P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Cumberland Springs P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Cumberland Springs P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Lone Cabin Mine P3 Water Problems Reclamation Pending
Pre 87 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned24 on register
  1. Carbonex Tipple No 1
    Facility coal · Carbonex Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 4002167
    Abandoned
  2. Dayton No 10 Mine
    Underground coal · Dayton Mining Company · MSHA ID 4002179
    Abandoned
  3. Dayton No 11 Mine
    Underground coal · Dayton Mining Company · MSHA ID 4002180
    Abandoned
  4. DJ Farms
    Surface metal/non-metal · DJ Farms · MSHA ID 4003370
    Abandoned
  5. E T R No 3 Ug
    Underground coal · E T R Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 4002766
    Abandoned and Sealed
  6. E T R No 4
    Underground coal · Talkington Mining Corp · MSHA ID 4002768
    Abandoned and Sealed
  7. Etr Plant #1
    Facility coal · Etr Mining Inc · MSHA ID 4003073
    Abandoned
  8. Flores Quarry #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Flores Stone · MSHA ID 4003563
    Abandoned
  9. Graysville No 2 Mine
    Underground coal · Southeastern Mining Company · MSHA ID 4001811
    Abandoned and Sealed
  10. Graysville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stone Sales and Service Inc · MSHA ID 4003403
    Abandoned
  11. Graysville Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stone Sales and Service Inc · MSHA ID 4003449
    Abandoned
  12. Laurel Brooke Site 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mt.Top Stone · MSHA ID 4003528
    Abandoned
  13. Laurelbrook Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Majestic Products, Inc. · MSHA ID 4003187
    Abandoned
  14. Laurelbrook Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Appalachian Stone Partners, Inc. · MSHA ID 4003461
    Abandoned
  15. Liberty
    Underground coal · Iron Properties · MSHA ID 4003402
    Abandoned
  16. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Reed Coal Company · MSHA ID 4001932
    Abandoned
  17. Ogden Rd Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quarry Properties LLC · MSHA ID 4003498
    Abandoned
  18. Omega 5
    Underground coal · Talkington Mining Corp · MSHA ID 4002975
    Abandoned and Sealed
  19. Piney Creek Mine And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tipton Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 4002507
    Abandoned
  20. Pita #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · D & D Quarry LLC · MSHA ID 4003281
    Abandoned
  21. Rhea #1
    Underground coal · Anchor-Tenn Inc · MSHA ID 4002995
    Abandoned and Sealed
  22. Rhea Stone And Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rhea Stone & Materials Inc · MSHA ID 4002506
    Abandoned
  23. Security Mine
    Underground coal · Iron Properties, LLC · MSHA ID 4003410
    Abandoned
  24. Wharton
    Surface metal/non-metal · Majestic Products, Inc. · MSHA ID 4003469
    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 39
Adit 13
Strip Mine 11
Quarry 6
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 4
Gravel Pit 4
Strip Mine 3
P2 Portals 3
Quarry 3
Mill Site 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
Clay Pit 1
Clay Pit 1
Open Pit Mine 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Gobs 1
P3 Water Problems 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.