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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Del Norte County, California

Del Norte County, California has 582 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1945–1997, including 42 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 458 prospect pits; 26 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 15 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Del Norte 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)
582
Mine openings
42
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
15
26 features carry a name458 prospect pits20 quadrangle maps, published 1945–1997 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
    42 7.2%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    458 78.7%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    48 8.2%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    33 5.7%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.2%
Named features on the maps26 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Alta Copper Mine Mine Shaft
Alta Mine Mine Shaft
Big Boy Mine Mine
Big Boy Mine Open Pit Mine
Browns Mine Mine Shaft
Browns Mine Open Pit Mine
China Mine Open Pit Mine
China Mine (Ora Grande) Open Pit Mine
Chrome Mine Open Pit Mine
Cleopatra Mine Open Pit Mine
Cleopatra Mine Prospect Pit
Copper Creek Chrome Mine Open Pit Mine
Copper Creek Mine Adit
Hole in the Ground Mine Adit
Hole-in-the-Ground Mine Adit
Holiday Mine Open Pit Mine
Holiday Mine Open Pit Mine
Judy Mine Mine Shaft
Judy Mine Open Pit Mine
Lind Mine Mine
Morrell Placer Mine Placer Mine
Mountain View Mines Mine Shaft
Tyson Chrome Co Mine Mine
Tyson Chrome Mine Open Pit Mine
Tyson Chrome Mine Open Pit Mine
Tyson Chrome Mine Open Pit Mine

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 Abandoned15 on register
  1. Arcata Lumber Co Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arcata Lumber Company · MSHA ID 0402333
    Abandoned
  2. Bed Rock Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yabadabadoo LLC · MSHA ID 0405826
    Abandoned
  3. Concept Mining Service Blackrock Gypsum
    Surface metal/non-metal · Concept Mining Service · MSHA ID 0402369
    Abandoned
  4. Crockett Bar
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Rock Products · MSHA ID 0404396
    Abandoned
  5. Elk Valley Pit & Mill #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Rock Products · MSHA ID 0402637
    Abandoned
  6. HUNTER CREEK
    Surface metal/non-metal · L K Martin · MSHA ID 0405442
    Abandoned
  7. Karwaski Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Karwaski Aggregates · MSHA ID 0404323
    Abandoned
  8. KLAMATH ASPHALT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jaxon Enterprises · MSHA ID 0405456
    Abandoned
  9. Klamath Krusher Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tutor - Saliba - Perini J/V · MSHA ID 0404814
    Abandoned
  10. Lopez Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · HW3 LLC · MSHA ID 0405830
    Abandoned
  11. Main Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rellim Redwood Co · MSHA ID 0401923
    Abandoned
  12. MARIS PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Del Norte County Road Division · MSHA ID 0400088
    Abandoned
  13. Simpco Bar
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morgan Redi-Mix · MSHA ID 0405191
    Abandoned
  14. Smith River Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0401871
    Abandoned
  15. Tidewater Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tidewater Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 0404903
    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 458
Adit 30
Open Pit Mine 28
Borrow Pit 23
Mine Shaft 12
Open Pit Mine 10
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 6
Quarry 4
Mine 3
Gravel Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Tailings - Mill 1
Gravel Pit 1
Borrow Pit 1
Placer Mine 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.