Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Santa Barbara County, California

Santa Barbara County, California has 202 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1941–1995, including 21 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 18 prospect pits; 28 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Santa Barbara 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)
202
Mine openings
21
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
28 features carry a name18 prospect pits42 quadrangle maps, published 1941–1995 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
    21 10.4%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    18 8.9%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    51 25.2%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    79 39.1%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    33 16.3%
Named features on the maps28 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Airox Mine Open Pit Mine area
Asphaltum Mine Open Pit Mine
Asphaltum Mine Open Pit Mine
Crushed Rock and Gravel Mine Gravel Pit area
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Quarry
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Tailings - Undifferentiated area
Diatomaceous Earth Quarries Tailings - Undifferentiated area
Gibraltar Mine Adit
Indian Cave Adit
Johns Manville Plant Open Pit Mine or Quarry
Los Prietos Mine Open Pit Mine
NTU Mine Open Pit Mine
Peacock Mine Prospect Pit
Phosphate Mine Open Pit Mine
Quicksilver Mine Open Pit Mine
Redrock Mine Mine Shaft
Redrock Quicksilver Mine Open Pit Mine
White Elephant Mine Adit

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 Abandoned18 on register
  1. Airox
    Surface metal/non-metal · Airox Earth Resources · MSHA ID 0402845
    Abandoned
  2. Crawford Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buellflat Rock Company Inc · MSHA ID 0403697
    Abandoned
  3. Cuyama Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · California Phosphate Corp · MSHA ID 0404205
    Abandoned
  4. Dibblee
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grefco Inc · MSHA ID 0402860
    Abandoned
  5. El Jaro
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kasler Corp · MSHA ID 0404705
    Abandoned
  6. El Jaro
    Surface metal/non-metal · Daniels Equipment Incorporated · MSHA ID 0405576
    Abandoned
  7. Gardner Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0401683
    Abandoned
  8. GPS River Rock Products Co
    Surface metal/non-metal · GPS River Rock Products Co · MSHA ID 0404898
    Abandoned
  9. Las Cruces Stone Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · G Antolini & Son · MSHA ID 0402886
    Abandoned
  10. Lompoc Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schmidt Construction Inc · MSHA ID 0400248
    Abandoned
  11. Miranda Pine Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Inland Rock · MSHA ID 0404475
    Abandoned
  12. Sand Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chris'S Sand & Shale Inc · MSHA ID 0404465
    Abandoned
  13. Santa Maria Stone Quarry #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · G Antolini & Son · MSHA ID 0400015
    Abandoned
  14. Santa Maria Stone/Colson Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · G Antolini & Son LLC · MSHA ID 0402382
    Abandoned
  15. Schuyler Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schuyler Trucking Company · MSHA ID 0403852
    Abandoned
  16. Shale Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chris'S Sand & Shale Inc · MSHA ID 0404464
    Abandoned
  17. Tolbert Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grefco Inc · MSHA ID 0403029
    Abandoned
  18. V & J
    Surface metal/non-metal · V & J Rock Transport Inc · MSHA ID 0404471
    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
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 26
Quarry 24
Gravel Pit 21
Gravel Pit 21
Prospect Pit 18
Adit 17
Mine Dump 16
Tailings - Undifferentiated 16
Open Pit Mine 11
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 9
Open Pit Mine 7
Strip Mine 4
Mine Shaft 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 2
Borrow Pit 2
Quarry 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Mine Dump 1
Sand and Gravel 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.