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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Alpine County, California

Alpine County, California has 128 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1956–1988, including 56 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 55 prospect pits; 31 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 8 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Alpine 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)
128
Mine openings
56
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
8
31 features carry a name55 prospect pits11 quadrangle maps, published 1956–1988 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
    56 43.8%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    55 43.0%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    6 4.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    7 5.5%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    4 3.1%
Named features on the maps31 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Acacia Mine Adit
Alhambra Mine Adit
Alpine Mine Adit
Brewers Mine Open Pit Mine
Burnside Mine Adit
Burnside Mine Open Pit Mine
Cal-Pine Mine Adit
Cal-Pine Mine Open Pit Mine
Curtz Mine Adit
Curtz Mine Prospect Pit
Dixon Mine Adit
Dixon Mine Adit
Exchequer Mine Adit
Globe Mine Adit
Gould & Curry Mine Adit
Isabella Tunnel Adit
IXL Mine Adit
IXL Mine Adit
Lady Franklin Mine Adit
Lady Washington Mine Adit
Leviathan Mine Open Pit Mine area
Lincoln Mine Adit
Lost Cabin Mine Adit
Mornigstar Mine Adit
Morningstar Mine Prospect Pit
Mountain Mine Adit
Pennsylvania Mine Adit
Red Gap Mine Adit
Rippon Mine Adit
Zaca Mine Adit
Zaca Mine Prospect Pit

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 Abandoned8 on register
  1. Blanchard Portable 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barry Blanchard Inc · MSHA ID 0405101
    Abandoned
  2. DIAMOND VALLEY BORROW PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crockett Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 0405390
    Abandoned
  3. Fredericksburg
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tahoe Asphalt, inc. · MSHA ID 0405970
    Abandoned
  4. GANSBERG SAND
    Surface metal/non-metal · A & A Construction Inc · MSHA ID 0405391
    Abandoned
  5. LINDA DADIAN ESQ
    Facility coal · Lyinde Dadiyane LLC LLP Fleet Management · MSHA ID 0405955
    Abandoned
  6. Walker Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Conoco Inc · MSHA ID 0403835
    Abandoned
  7. Zaca
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western States Minerals Corp · MSHA ID 0404444
    Abandoned
  8. Zaca Mine & Mill
    Underground metal/non-metal · Claude B Lovestedt · MSHA ID 0401337
    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
Prospect Pit 55
Adit 54
Gravel Pit 4
Tailings - Undifferentiated 4
Borrow Pit 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Mine Shaft 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Disturbed Surface - 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.