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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Lake County, California

Lake County, California has 118 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1942–1996, including 32 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 35 prospect pits; 37 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 Lake 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)
118
Mine openings
32
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
37 features carry a name35 prospect pits20 quadrangle maps, published 1942–1996 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
    32 27.1%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    35 29.7%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    26 22.0%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    24 20.3%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.8%
Named features on the maps37 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Abbott Mine Mine
Abbott Mine Mine Shaft
Bacon Consolidated Prospect Pit
Baker Mine Open Pit Mine area
Bell Mine Open Pit Mine
Bell Mine Quarry area
Big Chief Mine Open Pit Mine
Big Chief Mine Open Pit Mine
Big Injun Mine Adit
Big Injun Mine Open Pit Mine
Bullion Mine Open Pit Mine
Bullion Mine Prospect Pit
Chicago Mine Adit
Chicago Mine Open Pit Mine
Great Western Mine Open Pit Mine
Hardester Prospect Pit
Helen Mine Adit
Helen Mine Open Pit Mine
Jewess Prospect Pit
Jewess Mine Adit
Magnola Mine Adit
Midway Prospect Pit
Mirabel Mine Open Pit Mine
Mirabel Mine Prospect Pit
Otto Mine Prospect Pit
Otto Mine Prospect Pit
Plymouth Mine Prospect Pit
Red Elephant Mine Mine Shaft
Red Elephant Mine Open Pit Mine
Research Mine Adit
Sulfur Bank Mine Open Pit Mine area
Thorne Mine Adit
Thorne Mine Open Pit Mine
Turkey Run Mine Adit
Wall Street Mine Open Pit Mine
Wall Street Mine Open Pit Mine
Weiper 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 Abandoned24 on register
  1. Ace Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ace Concrete · MSHA ID 0404036
    Abandoned
  2. Ace Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ace Concrete · MSHA ID 0404257
    Abandoned
  3. BLUE ROCK QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Rock Quarry · MSHA ID 0405296
    Abandoned
  4. BLUE ROCK QUARRY II
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Rock Quarry · MSHA ID 0405404
    Abandoned
  5. Bottlerock Aggregates
    Surface metal/non-metal · Baldwin Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 0404609
    Abandoned
  6. Cache Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clearlake Redi-Mix Inc · MSHA ID 0405005
    Abandoned
  7. Clearlake Cinder Chip Co.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Robin Thomas Corporation · MSHA ID 0401017
    Abandoned
  8. Clearlake Red Lava Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Konocti Rock · MSHA ID 0404273
    Abandoned
  9. Diamond D Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Machinery Credit Corp · MSHA ID 0404219
    Abandoned
  10. Diamond J Corp
    Surface metal/non-metal · Diamond J Corporation · MSHA ID 0405457
    Abandoned
  11. Diamond J Ranch
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dutra Materials · MSHA ID 0405211
    Abandoned
  12. Ellen Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Al Hunt'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0404297
    Abandoned
  13. Frazell Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · F M Frazell Inc · MSHA ID 0401761
    Abandoned
  14. Hidden Valley Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clearlake Lava Inc · MSHA ID 0401930
    Abandoned
  15. Indian Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Parnum Paving Inc · MSHA ID 0405185
    Abandoned
  16. Kelseyville
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Co · MSHA ID 0401835
    Abandoned
  17. Konocti Rock
    Surface metal/non-metal · Konocti Rock · MSHA ID 0403211
    Abandoned
  18. Lake County Rock Inc Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lake County Rock · MSHA ID 0404834
    Abandoned
  19. Mc Laughlin Exploration Decline (94)
    Underground metal/non-metal · Homestake Mining Company Of California · MSHA ID 0404568
    Abandoned
  20. McLaughlin Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Homestake Mining Company of California · MSHA ID 0404462
    Abandoned
  21. Middle Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lange Brothers Construction Inc · MSHA ID 0404038
    Abandoned
  22. MIDDLE CREEK FACILITY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pivniska Trucking · MSHA ID 0405402
    Abandoned
  23. Petray Pit
    metal/non-metal · Petray Gravel · MSHA ID 0404902
    Abandoned
  24. Putah Creek Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hitchcock Brothers Cinders · MSHA ID 0403210
    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 35
Adit 24
Open Pit Mine 17
Gravel Pit 10
Mine Shaft 8
Open Pit Mine 6
Gravel Pit 5
Quarry 5
Quarry 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Mine 1
Mine Dump 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.