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Abandoned mines › Tennessee
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Shelby County, Tennessee

Shelby County, Tennessee has 160 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1939–1993. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Shelby 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)
160
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits19 quadrangle maps, published 1939–1993 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
    58 36.2%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    97 60.6%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 3.1%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned20 on register
  1. 64 Highway Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-South Pavers Inc · MSHA ID 4002204
    Abandoned
  2. Anderson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W S Jordan & Sons Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4002425
    Abandoned
  3. APAC TENNESSEE, INC.
    Facility metal/non-metal · Apac Tennessee Inc · MSHA ID 4003127
    Abandoned
  4. Bradley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Memphis Stone & Gravel · MSHA ID 4003371
    Abandoned
  5. Bragg Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & D Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 4002184
    Abandoned
  6. Bryant Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Howcroft Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4002185
    Abandoned
  7. Carrier Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Construction Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4002246
    Abandoned
  8. Collierville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clyde Owen Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4000783
    Abandoned
  9. CRESTVIEW
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferrell Paving, Inc. · MSHA ID 4002332
    Abandoned
  10. Dudley Anderson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crosby Al Constr Co · MSHA ID 4001451
    Abandoned
  11. HADLEY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Memphis Stone & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4003045
    Abandoned
  12. Hollywood Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Memphis Stone & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4002245
    Abandoned
  13. Macon Road Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Memphis Sand Company, Inc. · MSHA ID 4003246
    Abandoned
  14. Malone Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W S Jordan & Sons Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4001456
    Abandoned
  15. Mine No 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Long Construction Company · MSHA ID 4002256
    Abandoned
  16. Person Avenue Shop
    Facility metal/non-metal · Ferrell Paving Inc. · MSHA ID 4003381
    Abandoned
  17. Pleasant Hill Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Memphis Stone & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4002651
    Abandoned
  18. REED HOOKER GRAVEL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Standard Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 4003074
    Abandoned
  19. Sylvia G
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central States Dredging Company · MSHA ID 4001691
    Abandoned
  20. Van Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rogers Group Inc · MSHA ID 4002501
    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
Gravel Pit 58
Disturbed Surface 45
Gravel Pit 18
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 11
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 6
Sand Pit 5
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
Tailings - Undifferentiated 3
Open Pit Mine 2
Tailings - Pond 2
Borrow Pit 1
Sand Pit 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.