23 comments

  • koshergweilo 18 hours ago
    I don't know why, but when I read the title I assumed the map was about landmines.

    No, these are the cool ones that take stuff out of the ground, not the ones that destroy everything above them

    • rpozarickij 2 hours ago
      I'm pretty sure for me "mining.fyi" wouldn't have created any associations with landmines (although "mines.fyi" does seem to match the contents of the website closer).

      It'd be really interesting to see A/B testing results about what most people associate the word "mines" with (I wouldn't be surprised if that would be landmines in this day and age).

    • jedberg 18 hours ago
      Same! And then I saw three near my house and thought "if they know where they are, why haven't they been removed???"

      Then I clicked on one and saw it was the name of our local rock quarry. :)

    • andrew_mason1 5 hours ago
      hey now, landmines destroy stuff below them too
    • guessmyname 18 hours ago
      Oh! I thought it was landmines too and was very confused + concerned when I saw dots near where I live.
    • buildbot 18 hours ago
      I had exactly the same thought, and was quite intrigued. Very disappointed actually, it would be cool if there was open data about land mines.
      • AlotOfReading 17 hours ago
        The US government has been pretty good about cleaning up the UXO it knows about, which means what's left is the UXO it doesn't know about. You'll find it near most of the current and former testing ranges, particularly Yuma Proving Ground where there's trails leading right from the adjacent BLM land into areas with potential UXO. The only real barriers are a few signs and the law.
  • pimlottc 17 hours ago
    Please reduce the aggregation of map markers. It's not helpful to group every mine in southwest US in a single point in California that makes it look like they are none in any other state. I see this all the time on maps and it's really frustrating. Aggregate markers are helpful when the individual points are actually overlapping on the map, otherwise they obscure location data.
    • nick49488171 15 hours ago
      Agreed. Huge annoyance when looking for routes on MountainProject as one example.
    • phillipseamore 17 hours ago
      True. Clustering on a map is usually a sign that a map was setup by someone that doesn't use it or has no interest in the data.
    • charv 15 hours ago
      Strong disagree — aggregate markers were super useful when browsing the map on mobile! Maybe need to add a flag for mobile vs. desktop, but the experience would be a lot worse on mobile without them.
      • pimlottc 3 hours ago
        I tried it on mobile. The clustering reduces it to 6 points for all of North America. My phone has over 3 million pixels, surely there’s room for more detail than that.
    • Firehawke 13 hours ago
      Strong disagree. Zoom in and the clusters break up. Without the clustering, the map is a total mess when zoomed out.
      • pimlottc 3 hours ago
        There’s a place for clustering but it doesn’t need to be so aggressive
  • lattrommi 1 hour ago
    Set state to Ohio. Set status to Abandoned.

    Wonder why mines located in Ohio, show up in Greenland, Central America and the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

    On closer inspection, the Lat/Long are switched on some of these anomalies. I did not check them all.

  • tastyfreeze 18 hours ago
    USGS MRDATA has a lot more mines. Their data is also freely available for download. I use their datasets and base maps for my personal GIS projects.

    https://mrdata.usgs.gov/

    • bombcar 17 hours ago
      It includes what most would call quarries and it doesn't include anywhere near all of them (there are basically infinite invisible quarries everywhere to make concrete because it doesn't transport well).
  • jmspring 2 hours ago
    There seem to be more quarries in where I looked (near Reno) than mines. 16:1 in Allegheny is not on there - interesting place. It’s still semi active.
  • alan_sass 16 hours ago
    Just a heads-up that this is nowhere near "all the mines" in Nevada. I've explored quite a few personally, live by some, and that entire list of my memories is missing. NV is also not included in the list of top 10 states which is a clear indicator of missing data fwiw.
  • HardwareLust 19 hours ago
    I saw your title and my first thought was "Why are there landmines in the US?" lol.
    • buildbot 18 hours ago
      Apparently there are in fact, 0. Publicly, at least.
  • SaberTail 20 hours ago
    This doesn't seem to be complete. It's missing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, for example, which should be southeast of Carlsbad, NM. It's a underground salt (metal/non-metal) mine, and MSHA definitely regulates it
    • greggsy 17 hours ago
      The state numbers don’t seem to marry up, unless they’re indicative of something else?
    • snypher 17 hours ago
      WIPP isn't really a mine, right? More like an Amazon warehouse.
  • kenforthewin 20 hours ago
    I'm glad it's those kinds of mines rather than the ones I first thought of.
  • utool 7 hours ago
    I was trying to figure out where to send my son to work this summer. This makes it easier. Thank, very cool!
  • irasigman 20 hours ago
    Downloaded from https://www.msha.gov/data-and-reports/mine-data-retrieval-sy.... Pipe-delimited, updated weekly by MSHA.
    • alexchamberlain 20 hours ago
      There are 3 mines on Manhattan; is that correct?
      • leeter 20 hours ago
        Based on the info if you click into them, likely no. I would have expected them to be incidental materials from tunneling, but reading the description that's not the case.
      • greggsy 17 hours ago
        Quarries?
  • simonw 18 hours ago
    TIL there's a mine within San Francisco city limits! https://mines.fyi/mine/0405261

    (I guess technically a "surface mine" for "Construction Sand and Gravel".)

    • maxbond 18 hours ago
      Once you learn how to spot these you'll see them everywhere on road trips and such.
      • greggsy 17 hours ago
        I see quarries everywhere, and they’re kind of required near any city or road project around Australia. Never considered them as a mine though… more like a ‘general resource site’?
    • dboreham 17 hours ago
      The data set includes gravel pits. You can filter them out by selecting "Underground" for "Type".
      • defrost 16 hours ago
        Wouldn't that also filter out every open cut surface mine that strips overburden and directly extracts near surface coal, copper deposits, iron ore, etc.

        Not every mine is a "classic" underground mine with tunnels, etc.

        See (for example) the W.Australian SuperPit gold mine which consolidated every shaft mine in a particular region into a single open pit that goes deeper than any pre existing underground mine in that area.

  • nektro 19 hours ago
    I love the idea of a site like this existing but the expanding dots is a really bad way to visualize this.
  • advisedwang 19 hours ago
    This seems to include cement works and other processing plants that have somewhat mine-like output but aren't actually extracting anything from the ground at that site.
    • bombcar 17 hours ago
      And it doesn't include all of those.
  • doe88 7 hours ago
    Very dense, there is no mineshaft gap left!
  • w10-1 18 hours ago
    Can't see a thing. Dark on dark in Safari 26.3.
  • thirtygeo 12 hours ago
    Add Canada! Every province has a GIS repository of mines
  • greggsy 18 hours ago
    Is oil considered a mined mineral, or just shale oil?
  • LowLevelKernel 15 hours ago
    Why is it active post 2001? What purpose?
  • Exuma 20 hours ago
    How many of these pose asbestos hazards like the Libby mine?
    • dboreham 16 hours ago
      The Libby mine isn't in the data set because it's no longer operational.
      • defrost 16 hours ago
        The US, like many countries and regions, has poor coverage of abandoned, closed, and shuttered mine sites despite such sites still posing an ongoing danger in terms of imminent physical danger (collapse, decay, etc) and untreated waste piles and ponds leaching toxins into ground waters, etc.

        To answer the question posed, "how many (US?) mine sites pose a danger of type {X}" requires crawling the US BLM datasets, the OSHA datasets, the archived (from when active) MSHA datasets, and having a some luck onside for various specific sites due to large gaps and periods of not caring at all.

        See:

        * https://www.epa.gov/epcra/does-msha-have-jurisdiction-over-i...

        * https://www.blm.gov/programs/aml-environmental-cleanup/aml

        Various transnational global mining companies (Rio Tinto, et al) have extensive datasets on global resources and minesites, both operational, and past and potential future sites.

      • jeffbee 15 hours ago
        The map has a "Status" predicate.
  • jeffbee 15 hours ago
    I looked for all my local mines and none of them are on here. It seems that all of the listed mines for California are stone quarries. It omits the numerous other mines.
  • metalman 4 hours ago
    under 50, actual underground mines for metals, under 175 total open pit and underground mines for metal the real numbers for rock quarys * are hidden, and I must assume that they are also a small portion of the "total"

    * sell actual blocks of stone vs gravel/fill/agregate