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Abandoned mines › Colorado
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Archuleta County, Colorado

Archuleta County, Colorado has 19 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1957–1984, including 3 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 5 prospect pits; 3 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 12 problems in the county, 7 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Archuleta 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)
19
Mine openings
3
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
7
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
3 features carry a name5 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1957–1984 12 OSMRE problems, 5 reclaimed 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
    9 29.0%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    5 16.1%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 12.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    7 22.6%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 9.7%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    2 6.5%
  7. Other
    symbols outside the classes above
    1 3.2%
Named features on the maps3 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Columbine Mine Open Pit Mine
Medicine Mine Open Pit Mine
Triple S 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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems12 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Archuleta - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Archuleta County - Coal - Co-wide P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Archuleta County - Coal - Co-wide P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Pending
Co - Archuleta - Fea Problem type not recorded In Reclamation
Hardman Mine P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Martinez P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Mcbroom P3 Gobs In Reclamation
Mcbroom #2 P3 Gobs In Reclamation
Miller Subsidence P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Triple S/shamrock Mines - 80/30-01 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Yellow Jacket Mine - 86/22-01 P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Yellow Jacket Mine - 86/22-01 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned20 on register
  1. CANYON SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Canyon Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0504576
    Abandoned
  2. CRUSHER #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weber Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0504630
    Abandoned
  3. Crusher #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weber Sand & Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 0504757
    Abandoned
  4. Day Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Burnett Construction Company · MSHA ID 0503421
    Abandoned
  5. Day Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dayroc · MSHA ID 0504247
    Abandoned
  6. Denco of Pagosa LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Denco of Pagosa LLC · MSHA ID 0504633
    Abandoned
  7. Dom Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Potter Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0504043
    Abandoned
  8. Faun Gulch Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pagosa Gravel · MSHA ID 0503952
    Abandoned
  9. GOODMAN PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smithco Construction & Excavation · MSHA ID 0503950
    Abandoned
  10. Halverson Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Commercial Rock Products Inc · MSHA ID 0504646
    Abandoned
  11. HALVERSON PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Commercial Rock Products Inc · MSHA ID 0504051
    Abandoned
  12. Hawkins Mc B Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hawkins Trucking & Excavating · MSHA ID 0503951
    Abandoned
  13. Lob Lolly Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arboles Sand & Stone LLC · MSHA ID 0504930
    Abandoned
  14. Martinez Mine
    Surface coal · Bechtel Operating Service Corp · MSHA ID 0503022
    Abandoned
  15. Miller'S Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Utility Completions · MSHA ID 0504348
    Abandoned
  16. PIT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pagosa Cattle Company Inc · MSHA ID 0504525
    Abandoned
  17. PORTABLE CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Strohecker Asphalt & Paving, Inc. · MSHA ID 0504489
    Abandoned
  18. Riverside Ready Mix
    Surface metal/non-metal · Louis Tornatore · MSHA ID 0502543
    Abandoned
  19. San Juan Overlook Crushing
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Const Co Inc & Asphalt Gravel Prod Inc · MSHA ID 0503565
    Abandoned
  20. Weber Pit #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weber Sand & Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 0504521
    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 5
Gravel Pit 4
P2 Vertical Openings 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Adit 3
Gravel Pit 2
P3 Gobs 2
P2 Portals 1
Problem type not recorded 1
P1 Portals 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
Quarry 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
Open Pit Mine 1
P3 Mine Opening 1
P2 Subsidence 1
Other counties in ColoradoAll 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.