Abandoned mines in Gilpin County, Colorado

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   1,510 70.1%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   513 23.8%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   4 0.2%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   3 0.1%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   122 5.7%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   1 0.0%

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.

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.

1. Blackhawk Placer

   Surface metal/non-metal · Blackhawk Placer · MSHA ID 0503483
   Abandoned 1988-11-08
2. Blackhawk Station

   Surface metal/non-metal · Enzac Corp · MSHA ID 0504347
   Abandoned 1988-08-15
3. Boodle Mill

   Surface metal/non-metal · Cr-Vcm Joint Venture · MSHA ID 0503654
   Abandoned 1991-03-26
4. Buttons

   Underground metal/non-metal · Loyal Mining & Milling Corp · MSHA ID 0500705
   Abandoned 1980-02-08
5. Central City Project

   Surface metal/non-metal · Pitnap Inc · MSHA ID 0503514
   Abandoned 1981-07-27
6. Chaffee Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Little Kingdom Mining Company · MSHA ID 0501390
   Abandoned 2016-07-06
7. Chase Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Colorado Chase Mining Corporation · MSHA ID 0504917
   Abandoned 2021-11-17
8. Clay County Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Winstock Mining Corp (Us) · MSHA ID 0503530
   Abandoned 1986-05-21
9. Druid Mine

   Surface metal/non-metal · Solution Gold Ltd · MSHA ID 0504431
   Abandoned 1993-07-20
10. Fifty Gold Mines

    Underground metal/non-metal · Mineral Investments Corp · MSHA ID 0504155
    Abandoned 1987-08-11
11. Frontenac Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Saratoga Mines Inc · MSHA ID 0503652
    Abandoned 1984-06-28
12. G-S Mineral Project

    Surface metal/non-metal · Geo-Sol Mining & Milling · MSHA ID 0504262
    Abandoned 1990-08-16
13. Glory Hole Mill

    Facility metal/non-metal · Chain O'Mines · MSHA ID 0502420
    Abandoned 1983-05-11
14. Glory Hole Mill Annex

    Facility metal/non-metal · Intermountain Mining Ltd · MSHA ID 0503916
    Abandoned 1985-07-08
15. Glory Hole Mine

    Surface metal/non-metal · Intermountain Mining Ltd · MSHA ID 0503719
    Abandoned 1985-04-23
16. Golden Gilpin Mill

    Facility metal/non-metal · Moritz Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0500539
    Abandoned 1987-08-11
17. Golden Gilpin Mill

    Facility metal/non-metal · BH Mining Company, LLC · MSHA ID 0501544
    Abandoned 2025-03-10
18. Linklode

    Underground metal/non-metal · Linklode Mining Company · MSHA ID 0502760
    Abandoned 1977-06-27
19. Logos I

    Underground metal/non-metal · Systems Exploration Ii · MSHA ID 0503729
    Abandoned 1982-06-15
20. Mackay 444

    Underground metal/non-metal · Echo Gold Corp · MSHA ID 0503890
    Abandoned 1991-12-09
21. Mammoth Mines No 114 & 423

    Underground metal/non-metal · Kong Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0502774
    Abandoned 1982-10-06
22. Mascot

    Underground metal/non-metal · Mills Mines · MSHA ID 0503767
    Abandoned 1989-01-19
23. MEEKER #870

    Surface metal/non-metal · Sihoh/Meeker J V · MSHA ID 0504583
    Abandoned 1998-03-30
24. Moose Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Gold Ridge Mining Company · MSHA ID 0503706
    Abandoned 1982-05-19
25. National Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Central Gold Corp · MSHA ID 0503675
    Abandoned 1985-01-03
26. Oro-Fino

    Underground metal/non-metal · Paul S Coupey · MSHA ID 0503604
    Abandoned 1980-11-18
27. Peru No 903

    Underground metal/non-metal · Keystone Engineering · MSHA ID 0503513
    Abandoned 1980-10-23
28. Rudolph

    Surface metal/non-metal · Gus Rudolph · MSHA ID 0500467
    Abandoned 1982-05-21
29. Running Lode Properties

    Underground metal/non-metal · Silver Creek Mining Company · MSHA ID 0503794
    Abandoned 1985-07-05
30. Russell Gulch Placer

    Surface metal/non-metal · Ursetta & Company · MSHA ID 0503895
    Abandoned 1984-04-02
31. Saratoga Leach Site

    Facility metal/non-metal · Saratoga Mines Inc · MSHA ID 0503879
    Abandoned 1986-05-21
32. Smuggler Gold Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Smuggler Gold Mine LLC · MSHA ID 0505008
    Abandoned 2013-05-21
33. Smuggler Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Arthur L Smith · MSHA ID 0503786
    Abandoned 1985-07-05
34. Telegraph Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Telegraph Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0502837
    Abandoned 1985-08-26
35. Three B S

    Underground metal/non-metal · Silver Creek Mining Company · MSHA ID 0503708
    Abandoned 1984-04-30
36. Togo Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Saratoga Mines Inc · MSHA ID 0503653
    Abandoned 1985-07-03
37. Williams Tunnel

    Underground metal/non-metal · Kraft Building Contractors · MSHA ID 0503543
    Abandoned 1989-01-19
38. Young Ranch Resource

    Surface metal/non-metal · Young Ranch Resource, LLC · MSHA ID 0505165
    Abandoned 2026-02-23

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• San Juan County 3,913
• Lake County 3,672
• Gunnison County 2,703
• Saguache County 2,319
• San Miguel County 2,242
• Montrose County 2,077
• Custer County 2,062
• Clear Creek County 1,996
• Park County 1,624
• Chaffee County 1,486
• Summit County 1,449
• Boulder County 1,083

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.