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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Alameda County, California

Alameda County, California has 181 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1915–1993, including 12 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 5 prospect pits; 1 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 25 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Alameda 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)
181
Mine openings
12
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
25
1 features carry a name5 prospect pits26 quadrangle maps, published 1915–1993 0 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
    12 6.6%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    5 2.8%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    25 13.8%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    74 40.9%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    65 35.9%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Mitchell Shaft Mine Shaft

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned25 on register
  1. Alameda Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0404115
    Abandoned
  2. Central Maintenance Heavy Equipment Shop
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0404274
    Abandoned
  3. Commercial Minerals Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Commercial Minerals Company Inc · MSHA ID 0404357
    Abandoned
  4. DQA Dumbarton Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · DQA · MSHA ID 0402380
    Abandoned
  5. DQA La Vista Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · DQA · MSHA ID 0400097
    Abandoned
  6. Dumbarton Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dumbarton Quarry Associates · MSHA ID 0402379
    Abandoned
  7. Durham Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sand'S Quarry · MSHA ID 0403819
    Abandoned
  8. Ivaldi Bros Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · East Bay Excavating Company Inc · MSHA ID 0404421
    Abandoned
  9. Kilite
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lassenite Industries Inc · MSHA ID 0400576
    Abandoned
  10. Kraftile Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Kraftile Co · MSHA ID 0400578
    Abandoned
  11. Leona Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gallagher & Burk Inc · MSHA ID 0400113
    Abandoned
  12. Livermore Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · California Rock & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0401718
    Abandoned
  13. Newark Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morton Salt Division · MSHA ID 0403302
    Abandoned
  14. Newark Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Leslie Salt Company · MSHA ID 0403949
    Abandoned
  15. Niles
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quarry Products Inc · MSHA ID 0401870
    Abandoned
  16. Niles Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Interlocking Roof Tile Company · MSHA ID 0400563
    Abandoned
  17. Niles Clay Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mission Clay Products Corp · MSHA ID 0400586
    Abandoned
  18. Oakland Sand Co
    Facility metal/non-metal · Mission Valley Rock Company · MSHA ID 0405343
    Abandoned
  19. Oliver Brothers Salt
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oliver Brothers Salt Company · MSHA ID 0404034
    Abandoned
  20. Portable #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Inner City Recycling Inc · MSHA ID 0405800
    Abandoned
  21. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Piombo Construction Company · MSHA ID 0404764
    Abandoned
  22. Portable Plant 7
    Surface metal/non-metal · North American Recycling and Crushing, LLC · MSHA ID 0405633
    Abandoned
  23. Radum
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Aggregates West Inc · MSHA ID 0401827
    Abandoned
  24. San Leandro Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · San Leandro Rock Company · MSHA ID 0400242
    Abandoned
  25. SAND MERCHANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Aggregates West Inc · MSHA ID 0405415
    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
Salt Evaporator 62
Gravel Pit 24
Gravel Pit 24
Disturbed Surface - Pit 13
Quarry 12
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 12
Quarry 8
Adit 7
Prospect Pit 5
Mine Shaft 5
Evaporation Pond 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Clay Pit 2
Borrow Pit 1
Clay Pit 1
Other counties in CaliforniaAll 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.