Abandoned mines in Huerfano County, Colorado

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   247 52.4%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   24 5.1%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   6 1.3%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   40 8.5%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   105 22.3%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   2 0.4%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   47 10.0%

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.

…and 51 more problems not listed here.

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. ANTERO GRAVEL PIT

   Surface metal/non-metal · KW SCHRAMEK LANDSCAPE MATERIALS · MSHA ID 0505079
   Abandoned 2023-11-06
2. Bar Nothing Gravel Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · MS Forest · MSHA ID 0504815
   Abandoned 2005-12-06
3. Calumet No 2 Mine

   Underground coal · Delcarbon Coal Company · MSHA ID 0500295
   Abandoned and Sealed 1983-12-28
4. Colorado Coal Mine No 1

   Surface coal · Kaiser Steel Corp · MSHA ID 0503560
   Abandoned and Sealed 1986-03-03
5. Cullen Strip

   Surface coal · Cullen Construction Company · MSHA ID 0503509
   Abandoned and Sealed 1986-04-23
6. Dog Springs Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Huerfano Peak Sand/Gravel · MSHA ID 0503976
   Abandoned 1986-01-16
7. Goemmer Gravel Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Goemmer Gravel Pit · MSHA ID 0503824
   Abandoned 1987-04-21
8. Greenhorn Placer #1

   Facility metal/non-metal · Yellowstone Mining Company · MSHA ID 0503754
   Abandoned 1986-05-07
9. Kirkpatrick Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Huerfano County Road & Bridge · MSHA ID 0502932
   Abandoned 1979-07-31
10. Lascar Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Siete Inc · MSHA ID 0505174
    Abandoned 2025-09-09
11. Leone-Gardner

    Surface metal/non-metal · Domenic Leone Construction Company · MSHA ID 0504010
    Abandoned 1986-06-05
12. Maitland #2

    Underground coal · Red Ash Coal Company · MSHA ID 0500261
    Abandoned 1972-12-26
13. Montez Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503944
    Abandoned 1986-05-07
14. Portable Conveyor Plant P11-6619

    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0504323
    Abandoned 1989-09-07
15. Portable Crusher

    Surface metal/non-metal · Pfaffenhauser Construction · MSHA ID 0501009
    Abandoned 1990-09-12
16. Pryor Mine

    Surface coal · American Fuels Inc · MSHA ID 0503221
    Abandoned and Sealed 1986-03-03
17. SAN AROYA PIT

    Surface metal/non-metal · Walsenburg Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0501054
    Abandoned 2017-10-23
18. Vezzani Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Walsenburg Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0503920
    Abandoned 1995-08-11

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
• Gilpin County 2,148
• 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

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.