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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Humboldt County, California

Humboldt County, California has 188 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1942–1997, including 14 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 4 prospect pits; 16 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 34 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Humboldt 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)
188
Mine openings
14
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
34
16 features carry a name4 prospect pits48 quadrangle maps, published 1942–1997 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
    14 7.4%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    4 2.1%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    25 13.3%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    144 76.6%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.5%
Named features on the maps16 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Bonda Mine Mine
Bonda Mine Open Pit Mine
Ferris Mine Open Pit Mine
Ferris Mine Open Pit Mine
Horse Mountain Mine Adit
Horse Mtn Mine Adit
McHale Mine Open Pit Mine
Owl Mine Open Pit Mine
Owl Mine Open Pit Mine
Pearch Creek Mine Mine
Perch Cr Mine Open Pit Mine
Prospect Hill Mine Open Pit Mine
Red Cap Central Mine Adit
Red Cap Central Mine Adit
Schnable (Placer Diggings) Diggings area
Woods 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 Abandoned34 on register
  1. Arcata Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Artron Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 0404740
    Abandoned
  2. Arcata Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · S & A Development Company Inc · MSHA ID 0404197
    Abandoned
  3. Baker Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · G.R. Wilcox Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 0405858
    Abandoned
  4. Blue Lake Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller'S Backhoe & Excavating · MSHA ID 0404052
    Abandoned
  5. Carlotta Wash Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Pacific Lumber Company · MSHA ID 0405462
    Abandoned
  6. Cooks Valley
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mercer Fraser Company · MSHA ID 0402699
    Abandoned
  7. Cooks Valley Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mercer Fraser Co · MSHA ID 0405219
    Abandoned
  8. Dinsmore Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · State Of California Department Of Transportation · MSHA ID 0402769
    Abandoned
  9. Dinsmore Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mercer Fraser Company · MSHA ID 0405248
    Abandoned
  10. DRAKE MATERIALS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Drake Materials Inc · MSHA ID 0404067
    Abandoned
  11. Dusi Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Simpson Timber Co · MSHA ID 0404386
    Abandoned
  12. El Jay Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kernen Construction · MSHA ID 0405581
    Abandoned
  13. Eureka Ready Arcata Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eureka Sand & Gravel Co Inc · MSHA ID 0402710
    Abandoned
  14. Extec Screener
    Surface metal/non-metal · Humboldt Redwood Company LLC · MSHA ID 0405488
    Abandoned
  15. Graham Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Co · MSHA ID 0401920
    Abandoned
  16. Hansen Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hansen Truck Stop Inc · MSHA ID 0404441
    Abandoned
  17. Hoopa Valley Ready Mix
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hoopa Valley Ready Mix · MSHA ID 0404970
    Abandoned
  18. Humboldt Bay Gravel Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Humboldt Bay Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0404908
    Abandoned
  19. JC FRENCH
    Surface metal/non-metal · JC FRENCH EXCAVATION · MSHA ID 0405957
    Abandoned
  20. JC-1
    Surface metal/non-metal · T and H Construction · MSHA ID 0405978
    Abandoned
  21. Kernen Portable Crusher I
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kernen Construction · MSHA ID 0405335
    Abandoned
  22. LELAND ROCK MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rock & Gadberry Gravel · MSHA ID 0405461
    Abandoned
  23. Mason Materials
    Facility metal/non-metal · Mason Materials LLC · MSHA ID 0405646
    Abandoned
  24. Mc Intosh Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Intosh Construction · MSHA ID 0404399
    Abandoned
  25. PARKER JAW #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kernen Construction · MSHA ID 0405590
    Abandoned
  26. Power Screen 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kernen Construction · MSHA ID 0405443
    Abandoned
  27. Redwood Creek Bar
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joseph Hufford Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0404278
    Abandoned
  28. Rental Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kernen Construction · MSHA ID 0405721
    Abandoned
  29. Rowland Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hoopa Valley Ready Mix · MSHA ID 0402765
    Abandoned
  30. RUC QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · TT CONSTRUCTION · MSHA ID 0405889
    Abandoned
  31. Salyer Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Knight Redi-Mix · MSHA ID 0404073
    Abandoned
  32. Singley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · County Of Humboldt · MSHA ID 0402713
    Abandoned
  33. Warswick Bar
    Surface metal/non-metal · Figas-R R-Jv · MSHA ID 0404907
    Abandoned
  34. Wheeler-Hagan Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jim Wheeler Logging & Rock · MSHA ID 0405618
    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
Gravel Pit 69
Borrow Pit 38
Quarry 30
Open Pit Mine 14
Adit 11
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 6
Prospect Pit 4
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 4
Mine Shaft 3
Gravel Pit 2
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Mine 2
Diggings 1
Quarry - Rock 1
Tailings - Dredge 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.