Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › Colorado
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Morgan County, Colorado

Morgan County, Colorado has 14 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1951–1984. MSHA's register carries 10 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Morgan 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)
14
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
10
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits9 quadrangle maps, published 1951–1984 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    1 7.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    13 92.9%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned10 on register
  1. #19 Portable Dredge
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morgan County Road & Bridge · MSHA ID 0504575
    Abandoned
  2. Barlow Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dorn Ready Mix Corp · MSHA ID 0504491
    Abandoned
  3. Builders Aggregate Co
    Surface metal/non-metal · Builders Aggregate Co · MSHA ID 0500950
    Abandoned
  4. Carlson
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503380
    Abandoned
  5. DILLEY PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dilley'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0504029
    Abandoned
  6. Hanson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dilley'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0504028
    Abandoned
  7. Leffler Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morgan County Highway · MSHA ID 0503010
    Abandoned
  8. Morgan County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morgan County Highway · MSHA ID 0502939
    Abandoned
  9. PORTABLE PLANT #12
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morgan County Highway · MSHA ID 0504022
    Abandoned
  10. Westhoff Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morgan Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 0500970
    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 6
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Borrow Pit 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Sand 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.