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Abandoned mines › Colorado
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Douglas County, Colorado

Douglas County, Colorado has 133 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1940–1994, including 12 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 1 prospect pits; 1 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 4 problems in the county, 2 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 32 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Douglas 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)
133
Mine openings
12
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
2
MSHA mines marked abandoned
32
1 features carry a name1 prospect pits17 quadrangle maps, published 1940–1994 4 OSMRE problems, 2 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
    16 11.7%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    1 0.7%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    20 14.6%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    100 73.0%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Ute 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 problems4 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Douglas - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Portals In Reclamation
Douglas - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Douglas - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Douglas - Non-coal-county-wide P1 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 Abandoned32 on register
  1. A & M Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Castle Rock Aggregates · MSHA ID 0503626
    Abandoned
  2. A & M Rock Quarry & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Herren & Strong Inc · MSHA ID 0503124
    Abandoned
  3. Blakeland Pit
    Facility metal/non-metal · Western Paving Construction Company · MSHA ID 0503947
    Abandoned
  4. BRALEY PIT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ars Sand & Gravel Llc · MSHA ID 0503831
    Abandoned
  5. CASTLE ROCK QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Centennial Materials Company · MSHA ID 0503930
    Abandoned
  6. Ditmore Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Franktown Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0502032
    Abandoned
  7. Fletcher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503329
    Abandoned
  8. Franktown Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Construction Company · MSHA ID 0503813
    Abandoned
  9. Gove Canyon Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Silica Sand Inc · MSHA ID 0503704
    Abandoned
  10. Hines Channel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Proto Construction & Paving Inc · MSHA ID 0504171
    Abandoned
  11. HOGBACK MINE
    Underground metal/non-metal · Robinson Brick Company · MSHA ID 0502333
    Abandoned
  12. J A Cattle Co
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503410
    Abandoned
  13. Jimeson
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503330
    Abandoned
  14. Larkspur Pits 1 & 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kiewit Western Company · MSHA ID 0503144
    Abandoned
  15. LAWRENCE DISTRIBUTION YARD
    Facility metal/non-metal · Aggregate Industries West Central Region Inc · MSHA ID 0504701
    Abandoned
  16. Lawrence Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brinkmann-Woodward Construction Company · MSHA ID 0503278
    Abandoned
  17. Lowell Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Douglas County · MSHA ID 0504543
    Abandoned
  18. MC CLAIN PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schmidt Aggregates · MSHA ID 0504619
    Abandoned
  19. Mclair
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503314
    Abandoned
  20. Oaklands Ranch Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oaklands Ranch · MSHA ID 0505078
    Abandoned
  21. Pioneer
    Surface metal/non-metal · Robinson Brick Company · MSHA ID 0502220
    Abandoned
  22. Plum Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mobile Premix Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0503753
    Abandoned
  23. Sedalia Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Colonna Of Colorado Company · MSHA ID 0501431
    Abandoned
  24. Star Sand/Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Star Ready Mix · MSHA ID 0504715
    Abandoned
  25. Titan Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Titan Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0503042
    Abandoned
  26. Titan Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · H W Siddle Inc · MSHA ID 0501977
    Abandoned
  27. Tomah
    Surface metal/non-metal · Asphalt Paving Company · MSHA ID 0503959
    Abandoned
  28. Tricon Kent Co Portable Crushing Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tricon Kent Company · MSHA ID 0504290
    Abandoned
  29. Ute
    Surface metal/non-metal · Robinson Brick Company · MSHA ID 0500219
    Abandoned
  30. Walker Pit
    Facility metal/non-metal · Centennial Materials Company · MSHA ID 0501053
    Abandoned
  31. Whisenhunt Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Clay & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 0501901
    Abandoned
  32. Williamson Douglas
    Surface metal/non-metal · Denver Brick Company · MSHA ID 0500225
    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
Gravel Pit 28
Quarry 17
Open Pit Mine 15
Gravel Pit 12
Clay Pit 12
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 8
Mine Shaft 7
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 7
Clay Pit 5
Quarry 5
Adit 5
Sand Pit 5
P1 Vertical Openings 2
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Open Pit Mine 2
P1 Portals 2
Prospect Pit 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Borrow Pit 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.