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Abandoned mines › Colorado
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Grand County, Colorado

Grand County, Colorado has 233 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1924–1987, including 13 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 162 prospect pits; 4 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 30 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Grand 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)
233
Mine openings
13
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
2
MSHA mines marked abandoned
30
4 features carry a name162 prospect pits28 quadrangle maps, published 1924–1987 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 6.8%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    162 68.4%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 1.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    49 20.7%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 2.1%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    1 0.4%
Named features on the maps4 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Bobtail Mine Mine
Bobtail Mine Mine Shaft
High Lonesome Mine Adit
Wolverine 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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems4 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Co - Weld - Fea P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Co - Weld - Fea P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Grand - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Portals In Reclamation
Grand - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Vertical Openings In Reclamation

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 Abandoned30 on register
  1. Brig Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Everist Materials LLC · MSHA ID 0504870
    Abandoned
  2. BRIG PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-River Inc · MSHA ID 0504678
    Abandoned
  3. Certified Redi Mix
    Surface metal/non-metal · Certified Reddi Mix Inc · MSHA ID 0503262
    Abandoned
  4. Colo River Land Corp
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503361
    Abandoned
  5. Colo River Ranch Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colo River Ranch Gravel Pit · MSHA ID 0504825
    Abandoned
  6. Cottonwood Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peak Mtls · MSHA ID 0505099
    Abandoned
  7. Douglas Phillips Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Douglas Phillips Construction Company · MSHA ID 0502915
    Abandoned
  8. El-Jay Cone
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wadsworth Excavating Company Inc · MSHA ID 0504163
    Abandoned
  9. Finlay Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand County Road & Bridge Department · MSHA ID 0503638
    Abandoned
  10. Granby Airport
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand County Road & Bridge Department · MSHA ID 0503742
    Abandoned
  11. GRAND GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0504637
    Abandoned
  12. GRAND GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0504651
    Abandoned
  13. Henderson Operations
    Surface metal/non-metal · Climax Molybdenum Company · MSHA ID 0504791
    Abandoned
  14. Kattenberg
    Surface metal/non-metal · Granby Sand and Gravel · MSHA ID 0505092
    Abandoned
  15. Kattenberg
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oldcastle SW Group, Inc. · MSHA ID 0505116
    Abandoned
  16. Kremmling Airport
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand County Road & Bridge Department · MSHA ID 0503741
    Abandoned
  17. Metso 1213S Crusher CSH-7
    Surface metal/non-metal · Overlook Mine, LLC · MSHA ID 0504943
    Abandoned
  18. Metso LT120 Jaw Crusher CSH-11
    Surface metal/non-metal · Overlook Mine, LLC · MSHA ID 0504945
    Abandoned
  19. Murphy Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clayton Construction Company · MSHA ID 0503628
    Abandoned
  20. Overlook Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Overlook Mine, LLC · MSHA ID 0504890
    Abandoned
  21. Parshall Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mountain Park Concrete, Inc. · MSHA ID 0504672
    Abandoned
  22. Portable Crusher 1 & 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Caylor & Genz Earthmovers, Inc · MSHA ID 4801796
    Abandoned
  23. R.W. BUSSE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · R W Busse Excavating · MSHA ID 0503803
    Abandoned
  24. Reclamation Ridge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Overlook Mine LLC · MSHA ID 0504944
    Abandoned
  25. Silver Tip
    Underground metal/non-metal · Fremont H Goodwine · MSHA ID 0501527
    Abandoned
  26. Tabernash Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morrow & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 0503630
    Abandoned
  27. Troublesome Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand County Road & Bridge Department · MSHA ID 0503639
    Abandoned
  28. Universal #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Certified Reddi Mix Inc · MSHA ID 0504149
    Abandoned
  29. William Fork No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand County Road & Bridge Department · MSHA ID 0503637
    Abandoned
  30. Yust Ranch Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri-River Inc · MSHA ID 0504530
    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 162
Gravel Pit 37
Adit 12
Gravel Pit 11
Tailings - Pond 5
P1 Vertical Openings 2
Open Pit Mine 2
P1 Portals 1
P1 Subsidence 1
Quarry 1
Mine 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Mine Shaft 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.