What’s Under America’s Old Mining Towns?

America’s old mining towns often sit above a second industrial landscape of shafts, rooms, stopes, drainage tunnels and abandoned support systems. This documentary explores room-and-pillar subsidence, Butte’s immense mapped workings, Picher’s collapse risk, Centralia’s underground fire, flooded mine pools, modern grouting and the continuing effort to map abandoned mines. Sources: Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement — National Mine Map Repository Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement — Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System U.S. Geological Survey — The Abandoned Mine Inventory of the United States—A Brief Summary U.S. Geological Survey — USMIN: Abandoned Mine Lands Inventory Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology — Butte Stope Books: Maps of the Underground — A Digital Collection of Butte Stope Books Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection — Mine Subsidence Insurance Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection — Centralia Mine Fire Resources Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection — A Brief History of the Centralia Mine Fire U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — Tar Creek Superfund Site — Third Five-Year Review Report