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← Abandoned mines, all states · Mining incidents in Arizona
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Arizona

Arizona has 39,745 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1901–2004, including 13,664 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts), across 15 counties. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 797 problems in the state, 25 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 1,671 Arizona mines with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps of Arizona, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem, and every MSHA-registered mine with status Abandoned, by county. Each county page lists the named features and links every MSHA mine to its own record.

Mapped mine features (USGS)
39,745
Mine openings
13,664
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
25
MSHA mines marked abandoned
1,671
15 counties with mapped features1,934 features carry a name20,615 prospect pitsmaps published 1901–2004 797 OSMRE problems, 772 reclaimed241 problem areas (PADs), 23 with work left 1 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed The state program's own inventory estimate: ~200,000 features (IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report 2025, Table 5, page 46).
By countyranked by mapped USGS features
County USGS features Openings OSMRE problems MSHA abandoned
Mohave County
5,749 2,079 0 212
La Paz County
5,030 1,441 0 42
Pima County
4,684 1,456 0 119
Yavapai County
3,585 1,348 0 259
Gila County
3,401 1,690 0 83
Pinal County
3,289 1,183 0 143
Maricopa County
3,227 900 0 315
Cochise County
3,108 1,126 0 135
Yuma County
1,743 486 0 60
Santa Cruz County
1,696 1,025 0 38
Coconino County
1,397 43 210 164
Greenlee County
1,312 579 0 20
Graham County
656 177 1 15
Apache County
567 108 425 23
Navajo County
301 23 161 43
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    13,808 34.1%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    20,615 50.8%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    1,314 3.2%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    3,529 8.7%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    785 1.9%
  6. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    5 0.0%
  7. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    465 1.1%
  8. Other
    symbols outside the classes above
    21 0.1%
By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms
Feature type Features
Prospect Pit 20,577
Mine Shaft 6,864
Adit 6,798
Open Pit Mine 895
Quarry 793
Gravel Pit 775
Borrow Pit 628
Gravel Pit 427
Mine Dump 352
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 244
Cinder Pit 234
Borrow Pit 219
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 189
Tailings - Undifferentiated 132
Open Pit Mine 126
P3 Haul Road 105
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 86
Tailings - Pond 81
P3 Other 80
P2 Portals 78
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 63
Cinder Pit 57
P3 Pits 54
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 52
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 47
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 46
Mine 44
Prospect Pit 37
P3 Bench 35
Quarry 34
P1 Portals 32
P1 Vertical Openings 25
Disturbed Surface 25
Settling Pond 23
P3 Gobs 20
Sand Pit 19
P3 Mine Opening 19
Sand Pit 18
Strip Mine 17
Clay Pit 15
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, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine, and several problems make one problem area (PAD), which is the unit a state program counts and reports; the public extract can also hold more problem areas than a state's live inventory, because areas since merged or ruled ineligible stay in the published file, so a state figure that differs from this one is not a contradiction. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s; that is a regulatory status rather than a physical one, and it also holds operations merely between jobs, portable crushers above all, which is why over a thousand mines carrying it have been inspected in the last two years. The three overlap and are never added together. Counties are assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method and every source are 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.