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Abandoned mines › California
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Tulare County, California

Tulare County, California has 309 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1936–1988, including 100 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 111 prospect pits; 22 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 22 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Tulare 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)
309
Mine openings
100
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
22 features carry a name111 prospect pits54 quadrangle maps, published 1936–1988 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
    100 32.4%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    111 35.9%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    31 10.0%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    67 21.7%
Named features on the maps22 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Bull Point Mine Open Pit Mine
Bull Point Mine Open Pit Mine
Chihuahua Mine Adit
Clough Cave Adit
Deep Creek Cave Adit
Empire Mine Adit
Fairview Mine Adit
Fairview Mine Mine Shaft
Good Hope Mines Adit
Good Hope Mines Adit
Lady Franklin Mine Adit
Last Chance Mine Adit
Last Chance Mine Adit
Packsaddle Cave Adit
Palmer Cave Adit
Paradise Cave Adit
Pine Tree Mine Open Pit Mine
Tip Top Mine Mine Shaft
Tip Top Mine Mine Shaft
Tungstore Mine Open Pit Mine
Tungstore Mine Open Pit Mine area
White Chief 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 Abandoned22 on register
  1. Britten Granite Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · L E Britten Construction · MSHA ID 0405166
    Abandoned
  2. District 1 Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tulare County Road Department · MSHA ID 0404121
    Abandoned
  3. District No 2 Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tulare County Road Department · MSHA ID 0404135
    Abandoned
  4. District No 3 Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tulare County Road Department · MSHA ID 0404136
    Abandoned
  5. District No 4 Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tulare County Road Department · MSHA ID 0404137
    Abandoned
  6. District No 5 Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tulare County Road Department · MSHA ID 0404138
    Abandoned
  7. DRY CREEK PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Artesia Ready Mix Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 0405188
    Abandoned
  8. Extec Screening Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mitchell Brown General Engineering Inc · MSHA ID 0405695
    Abandoned
  9. Good Hope Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · El Ganador Inc · MSHA ID 0404484
    Abandoned
  10. Jim Hewitt Granite
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jim Hewitt Granite · MSHA ID 0405182
    Abandoned
  11. Kaweah River Rock
    Surface metal/non-metal · Santa Fe Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 0401832
    Abandoned
  12. Lemon Cove Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · CEMEX Construction Materials Pacific, LLC · MSHA ID 0401896
    Abandoned
  13. Lucky Stars Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Metaline Industries Inc · MSHA ID 0404272
    Abandoned
  14. Mobile Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dunn's Inc · MSHA ID 0405905
    Abandoned
  15. Muller Granite Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Muller Granite · MSHA ID 0404258
    Abandoned
  16. Pine Tree Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dock & Velma Walker · MSHA ID 0404485
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Plant A
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fees Construction Inc · MSHA ID 0405738
    Abandoned
  18. PRM SAND COMPANY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Porterville Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 0405174
    Abandoned
  19. Strathmore Granite Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Adair Brown Company · MSHA ID 0403301
    Abandoned
  20. Success Asphalt Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Success Asphalt Company · MSHA ID 0401942
    Abandoned
  21. Terra Bella Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granite Construction Company · MSHA ID 0405173
    Abandoned
  22. Tulare Rock Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oildale Ready Mix · MSHA ID 0401754
    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 111
Adit 84
Open Pit Mine 19
Gravel Pit 19
Mine Shaft 16
Gravel Pit 11
Quarry 9
Borrow Pit 9
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Clay Pit 6
Borrow Pit 6
Sand Pit 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Quarry 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.