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Abandoned mines › West Virginia
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Lincoln County, West Virginia

Lincoln County, West Virginia has 78 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1962–1997, including 30 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 43 problems in the county, 28 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Lincoln 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)
78
Mine openings
30
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
28
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1962–1997 43 OSMRE problems, 15 reclaimed 4 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
    52 43.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    47 38.8%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 4.1%
  4. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 0.8%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    16 13.2%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems43 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Ada Linville P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Ada Linville P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Alkol (adkins) Portal P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Alkol Portals P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Alkol Portals P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Baber "a" P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Baber "a" P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Branchland (Blankenship) Portal Dra P1 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Completed
Branchland (Blankenship) Portal Dra P1 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Branchland (Blankenship) Portal Dra P1 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Branchland (Blankenship) Portal Dra P1 Portals Reclamation Pending
Branchland (Blankenship) Portal Dra P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Branchland (Crum) Drainage P1 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Branchland (Crum) Drainage P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Branchland (Ellis) Portals and Land P1 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Branchland (Ellis) Portals and Land P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Branchland (Reynolds) Portals P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Branchland (Reynolds) Portals P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Branchland B P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Branchland Hubball A P1 Portals Reclamation Pending
Branchland Hubball A P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Branchland Portal P2 Portals In Reclamation
Branchland Portals Rt. 10 P1 Portals In Reclamation
Burton Portals P1 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Pending
Burton Portals P1 Portals Reclamation Pending
Ferrellsburg Poratls P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Fez Creek (hill) Portals P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Guyan River Refuse P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Guyan River Refuse P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Guyan River Refuse P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Ivy Creek Portals & Drainage P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Ivy Creek Portals & Drainage P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Ivy Creek Portals & Drainage P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Lessie Shelton P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Limestone Branch (freeman) Portals P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Completed
Low Gap (jeffrey) Portals P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Lowgap Branch Refuse P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Lowgap Portal And P2 Portals In Reclamation
Lowgap Portal And P3 Gobs In Reclamation
Lucien Adkins P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Morrisvale (miller) Drainage P1 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Pending
Sams Branch Drainage P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Pending
Smith Farms P1 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 Abandoned19 on register
  1. Auger No 1
    Surface coal · Wilder Coal Corp · MSHA ID 4608126
    Abandoned
  2. Auger No 1
    Surface coal · J & L Auger Inc · MSHA ID 4608255
    Abandoned
  3. Berry Branch Mine
    Underground coal · Hobet Mining, Inc. · MSHA ID 4608744
    Abandoned and Sealed
  4. Daisy Prep Plant
    Facility coal · Winchester Coals Inc · MSHA ID 4606443
    Abandoned
  5. Dredge No 3
    Facility coal · Guyan Coal Inc · MSHA ID 4605967
    Abandoned
  6. Fork Creek No 1
    Underground coal · Coal River Mining LLC · MSHA ID 4608763
    Abandoned and Sealed
  7. Mine 5
    Surface coal · Coal River Mining LLC · MSHA ID 4609120
    Abandoned
  8. Mule #1
    Facility coal · Keyrock Energy Inc · MSHA ID 4608187
    Abandoned
  9. No 1 Dredge
    Facility coal · A & N Dredging Inc · MSHA ID 4605945
    Abandoned
  10. No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · Allied Coal Inc · MSHA ID 4604527
    Abandoned
  11. No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · W & C Coal Company · MSHA ID 4604754
    Abandoned
  12. No 2
    Underground coal · Deep Ford Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 4608519
    Abandoned and Sealed
  13. River Dredge
    Facility coal · Rio Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 4606015
    Abandoned
  14. Sand Plant #1
    Facility coal · Big Rivers Coal · MSHA ID 4606062
    Abandoned
  15. Sanders Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sanders Dummy Company · MSHA ID 4600152
    Abandoned
  16. Southfork Surface
    Surface coal · Brumfield Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4608347
    Abandoned
  17. Surface Mine No 2
    Surface coal · Heartland Coal Company · MSHA ID 4608071
    Abandoned
  18. Tantrough No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · Winchester Coals Inc · MSHA ID 4606678
    Abandoned and Sealed
  19. Tiny Creek No 2 Mine
    Underground coal · Coal River Mining LLC · MSHA ID 4608835
    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
Disturbed Surface 40
Adit 30
P2 Portals 12
P1 Portals 10
Strip Mine 6
P2 Dangerous Impoundments 5
P1 Dangerous Impoundments 4
P1 Dangerous Slides 3
P3 Gobs 2
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
P3 Other 1
Tipple 1
P2 Subsidence 1
P2 Dangerous Slides 1
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 1
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
Other counties in West VirginiaAll 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.