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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Mendocino County, California

Mendocino County, California has 155 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1943–1995, including 3 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 101 prospect pits; 1 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 Mendocino 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)
155
Mine openings
3
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
34
1 features carry a name101 prospect pits33 quadrangle maps, published 1943–1995 1 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
    3 1.9%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    101 65.2%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    15 9.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    36 23.2%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Linser 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. Apache Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hot Rocks Inc · MSHA ID 0404687
    Abandoned
  2. Arnold Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters & Garman Construction · MSHA ID 0405088
    Abandoned
  3. B&B Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & B Equipment & Quarry · MSHA ID 0405409
    Abandoned
  4. BED ROCK, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bed Rock Inc · MSHA ID 0405056
    Abandoned
  5. Big River Rock Co
    Surface metal/non-metal · Big River Rock Co · MSHA ID 0402775
    Abandoned
  6. BIG RIVER ROCK CO.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Big River Rock Company · MSHA ID 0405272
    Abandoned and Sealed
  7. Blue Ridge Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · CalMat Co. · MSHA ID 0405355
    Abandoned
  8. Cleland Bar
    Surface metal/non-metal · NorCal Recycled Rock & Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 0405427
    Abandoned
  9. Garcia Aggregates
    Surface metal/non-metal · Garcia Aggregates · MSHA ID 0401777
    Abandoned
  10. Ham Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hot Rocks Inc · MSHA ID 0404686
    Abandoned
  11. Hells 1/2 Acre
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hot Rocks Inc · MSHA ID 0404683
    Abandoned
  12. Hot Rocks #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hot Rocks Inc · MSHA ID 0404682
    Abandoned
  13. Laytonville Rock
    Surface metal/non-metal · Laytonville Rock · MSHA ID 0405283
    Abandoned
  14. Lin W Ford Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lin W Ford Construction · MSHA ID 0404685
    Abandoned
  15. Lucky Strike
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rand Rock Company · MSHA ID 0404751
    Abandoned
  16. Mattern Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mattern Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0401856
    Abandoned
  17. Mendocino Aggregates
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Co · MSHA ID 0403373
    Abandoned
  18. NORCAL
    Surface metal/non-metal · NORCAL Recycled Rock & Aggregate Inc · MSHA ID 0405568
    Abandoned
  19. Parnum Paving Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Parnum Paving Inc · MSHA ID 0401904
    Abandoned
  20. Pieta Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 0405039
    Abandoned
  21. Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 0405591
    Abandoned
  22. PORTABLE CRUSHER I
    Surface metal/non-metal · Parnum Paving Inc · MSHA ID 0405245
    Abandoned
  23. Premier Track300 Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Laytonville Rock · MSHA ID 0405923
    Abandoned
  24. Red Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Co · MSHA ID 0404761
    Abandoned
  25. REDWOOD VALLEY GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Redwood Valley Gravel Products · MSHA ID 0403543
    Abandoned
  26. Russian River Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ghilotti Brothers Construction · MSHA ID 0404891
    Abandoned
  27. Second Crossing Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Georgia Pacific Corp · MSHA ID 0404120
    Abandoned
  28. Shuster Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Co · MSHA ID 0405071
    Abandoned
  29. Stagecoach Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stagecoach Village Inc · MSHA ID 0405089
    Abandoned
  30. Ten Mile Second Crossing
    Surface metal/non-metal · Baxman Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0405244
    Abandoned
  31. Ukiah Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shamrock Materials Inc · MSHA ID 0405058
    Abandoned
  32. Warbonnet Rock Products
    Surface metal/non-metal · Warbonnet Rock Products · MSHA ID 0405233
    Abandoned
  33. WILLITS CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Parnum Paving Inc · MSHA ID 0404684
    Abandoned
  34. Willits Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shuster'S Willits Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 0402001
    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 101
Gravel Pit 16
Open Pit Mine 8
Gravel Pit 6
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 6
Borrow Pit 5
Quarry 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Adit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Quarry 2
Disturbed Surface 1
Mine Shaft 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.