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Abandoned mines › West Virginia
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Putnam County, West Virginia

Putnam County, West Virginia has 71 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1958–1971, including 48 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 1 prospect pits. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 43 problems in the county, 17 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 6 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Putnam 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)
71
Mine openings
48
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
17
MSHA mines marked abandoned
6
0 features carry a name1 prospect pits6 quadrangle maps, published 1958–1971 43 OSMRE problems, 26 reclaimed 2 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
    68 59.6%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    1 0.9%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    17 14.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    1 0.9%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 4.4%
  6. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    8 7.0%
  7. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    14 12.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems43 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Coal Hollow Refuse A P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Coal Hollow Refuse A P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Coal Hollow Refuse A P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Coal Hollow Refuse B P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Eagle Hole Hollow #2 P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Eagle Hole Hollow #3 P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
HARMONDS CREEK PORTALS PHASE I and P1 Portals In Reclamation
HARMONDS CREEK PORTALS PHASE I and P2 Dangerous Impoundments In Reclamation
HARMONDS CREEK PORTALS PHASE I and P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
HARMONDS CREEK PORTALS PHASE I and P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Heizer & Manilla Ck. Water Supply P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek "A" Maintenance P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek "A" Maintenance P1 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek "A" Maintenance P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek "A" Maintenance P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek "b" Com P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek "b" Com P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek (gillespie) Portals P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek (lett) Drainage P1 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek (lett) Drainage P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek (luikart) Mine Shaft P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek (McGhee) Portal P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek (McGhee) Portal P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek (meadows) Portals P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Heizer Creek (zitzelsberger) Portal P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Pending
Heizer Creek (zitzelsberger) Portal P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Hurricane Creek Port P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Jeep Trail Portals P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Completed
Jeep Trail Portals P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Jeep Trail Portals P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Lanham (Workman) Portals P2 Dangerous Impoundments In Reclamation
Lanham (Workman) Portals P2 Portals In Reclamation
Manila Creek "B" P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Manila Creek "B" P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Manila Creek "B" P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Manila Creek A Ii P2 Dangerous Slides Reclamation Completed
Manila Creek A Ii P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Miller Portals P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Raymond City (west) Portal P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Winter Portals P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Winter Portals P2 Dangerous Impoundments Reclamation Completed
Winter Portals P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Winter Portals 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 Abandoned6 on register
  1. No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · Lanham Branch Coal Company · MSHA ID 4605321
    Abandoned and Sealed
  2. No 1 Mine
    Underground coal · I V Cunningham · MSHA ID 4605329
    Abandoned
  3. No 1 Surface
    Surface coal · Belle Contracting Inc · MSHA ID 4607373
    Abandoned and Sealed
  4. No 2 Mine
    Underground coal · I V Cunningham · MSHA ID 4605330
    Abandoned
  5. Peter Wright
    Facility coal · Voyager Coal Company · MSHA ID 4605856
    Abandoned
  6. Quality Magnetite LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quality Magnetite LLC · MSHA ID 4608672
    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 47
Strip Mine 14
P2 Portals 13
P1 Portals 5
P2 Dangerous Impoundments 4
Tipple 4
P2 Dangerous Slides 4
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 4
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 3
Disturbed Surface 3
P1 Vertical Openings 2
P1 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P1 Dangerous Impoundments 1
Quarry 1
P2 Polluted Water: Human Consumption 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
Mine Shaft 1
Prospect Pit 1
P2 Clogged Streams 1
P3 Mine Opening 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.