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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Fresno County, California

Fresno County, California has 638 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1942–2004, including 46 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 464 prospect pits; 30 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 24 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Fresno 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)
638
Mine openings
46
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
30 features carry a name464 prospect pits69 quadrangle maps, published 1942–2004 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
    46 7.2%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    464 72.7%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    38 6.0%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    86 13.5%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    4 0.6%
Named features on the maps30 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Academy Granite Quarry Quarry
Archer Mine Adit
Archer Mine Adit
Archer Mine Open Pit Mine
Boyden Cave Adit
Clara H Mine Open Pit Mine
Clara H Mine Prospect Pit
Copper King Mine Open Pit Mine
Copper King Mine Prospect Pit
Del Mexico Mine Adit
Del Mexico Mine Adit
Del Mexico Mine Open Pit Mine
Garnet Dike Mine Open Pit Mine
Jack Thorn Mine Adit
Jack Thorn Mine Prospect Pit
James Corbett Byles Mine Open Pit Mine
James Corbett Byles Mine Open Pit Mine area
Kaiser Diggings Diggings
Mercey Mine Open Pit Mine
Mistake Mine Open Pit Mine area
Pick and Shovel Mine Adit
Pick and Shovel Mine Adit
Railroad Mine Open Pit Mine
Railroad Mine Open Pit Mine area
Rainbow Mine Adit
Rita Mine Adit
Rita Mine Open Pit Mine area
Sullivan Mine Adit
Sullivan Mine Adit
Underground Powerhouse 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 Abandoned24 on register
  1. 19 B Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0404835
    Abandoned
  2. BASIN D N
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Materials Inc · MSHA ID 0405430
    Abandoned
  3. Brueckner Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brueckner Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0403715
    Abandoned
  4. COALINGA PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Artesia Ready Mix Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 0404945
    Abandoned
  5. Craycroft Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Craycroft Brick Company · MSHA ID 0400548
    Abandoned
  6. Forest Service Providence Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Claude C Wood Company · MSHA ID 0404306
    Abandoned
  7. FRIANT PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Calmat Company · MSHA ID 0401999
    Abandoned
  8. Julia
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mein Lieben Mines Inc · MSHA ID 0405841
    Abandoned
  9. Lobo Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Washington Miners · MSHA ID 0404335
    Abandoned
  10. ORANGE AVENUE DISPOSAL RICE RD S
    Surface metal/non-metal · Orange Avenue Disposal Inc · MSHA ID 0405438
    Abandoned
  11. PANOCHE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Talley Oil, Inc. · MSHA ID 0405445
    Abandoned
  12. Panoche Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0404091
    Abandoned
  13. Portable #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · B&C Demolition Inc. · MSHA ID 0405966
    Abandoned
  14. Portable #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kroeker Inc · MSHA ID 0405829
    Abandoned
  15. Portable #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kroeker Inc. · MSHA ID 0405851
    Abandoned
  16. Portable #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kroeker Inc. · MSHA ID 0405854
    Abandoned
  17. Progressive Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Homer & Jerry Gaddy · MSHA ID 0404596
    Abandoned
  18. Rainbow Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Doyle Madole Mineral Extraction · MSHA ID 0404333
    Abandoned
  19. River Rock Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · CalMat Co · MSHA ID 0401711
    Abandoned
  20. Sand Pit #12
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0404327
    Abandoned
  21. Santa Cruz Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Atlas Asbestos Company · MSHA ID 0402554
    Abandoned
  22. Santa Cruz Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Precision Lumber Company · MSHA ID 0401059
    Abandoned
  23. SANTA FE READYMIX
    Surface metal/non-metal · Santa Fe Aggregates · MSHA ID 0401722
    Abandoned
  24. Seirra Pacific Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0404949
    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 464
Adit 40
Gravel Pit 28
Borrow Pit 16
Open Pit Mine 14
Open Pit Mine 12
Gravel Pit 12
Quarry 11
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 10
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 9
Mine Shaft 6
Clay Pit 4
Tailings - Undifferentiated 3
Borrow Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Disturbed Surface 2
Diggings 1
Tailings - Pond 1
Sand 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.