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Abandoned mines › Tennessee
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in White County, Tennessee

White County, Tennessee has 60 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1912–1984, including 19 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 17 problems in the county, 6 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 11 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering White 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)
60
Mine openings
19
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
6
MSHA mines marked abandoned
11
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1912–1984 17 OSMRE problems, 11 reclaimed 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
    20 26.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    30 39.0%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    11 14.3%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    7 9.1%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    9 11.7%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems17 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Bon Air P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Bon Air P3 Haul Road Reclamation Pending
Bon Air P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Pending
Eastland P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Eastland P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Eastland P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Eastland P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Eastland P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Eastland P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Eastland P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Eastland P3 High Wall Reclamation Completed
Eastland P3 Pits Reclamation Completed
Eastland P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Laurel Creek P3 Pits Reclamation Pending
Laurel Creek P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Pre 87 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Pre 87 P2 Portals 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 Abandoned11 on register
  1. Area No 3
    Facility coal · Burl & Harold Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4002689
    Abandoned
  2. COUNTY QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · White County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4000852
    Abandoned
  3. D & L Limestone Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · D & L Limestone Inc · MSHA ID 4002883
    Abandoned
  4. Eastland No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Geodyne Corp · MSHA ID 4001713
    Abandoned
  5. Jared Stone II
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jared Stone · MSHA ID 4003388
    Abandoned
  6. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Page Coal Company · MSHA ID 4002409
    Abandoned
  7. No 2 Strip
    Surface coal · Thornton Coal Company · MSHA ID 4001119
    Abandoned
  8. No 6 Strip
    Surface coal · Judo Mining Co Inc · MSHA ID 4001632
    Abandoned
  9. No 9 Strip
    Surface coal · Judo Mining Co Inc · MSHA ID 4001998
    Abandoned
  10. Sparta Plant And Pit No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sparta Sand Company · MSHA ID 4002737
    Abandoned
  11. White No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · D & H Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 4002290
    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
Adit 19
Strip Mine 14
Disturbed Surface 8
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Quarry 6
Quarry 5
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 3
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 2
P3 Pits 2
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 2
P3 Gobs 2
P3 Spoil Area 2
P3 High Wall 1
P2 Portals 1
P3 Mine Opening 1
P3 Haul Road 1
Strip 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.