Abandoned mines in Saguache County, Colorado

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   300 12.9%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   1,910 82.2%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   18 0.8%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   54 2.3%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   41 1.8%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   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. Baca Grande Stables Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Const Co Inc & Asphalt Gravel Prod Inc · MSHA ID 0503518
   Abandoned 1983-03-07
2. Blue Moon Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Demure Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 0503776
   Abandoned 1983-11-18
3. Center Dump Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Saguache County · MSHA ID 0503533
   Abandoned 1989-09-18
4. Coleman Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Const Co Inc & Asphalt Gravel Prod Inc · MSHA ID 0503601
   Abandoned 1983-03-07
5. Columbia Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Columbia Mining · MSHA ID 0503918
   Abandoned 1986-03-31
6. Continental Mine

   Underground metal/non-metal · Trp Minerals Corp · MSHA ID 0504216
   Abandoned 1987-06-26
7. Crusher 4

   Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Company Inc of Alamosa · MSHA ID 2902224
   Abandoned 2023-01-25
8. Crystal Hill

   Facility metal/non-metal · Draco Gold Mines Inc · MSHA ID 0503572
   Abandoned 1988-07-18
9. Crystal Hill

   Surface metal/non-metal · Wytana Inc D/B/A Crystal Hill Mining Company · MSHA ID 0503941
   Abandoned 1986-08-27
10. Hathaway

    Underground metal/non-metal · Melvin R Gydesen · MSHA ID 0504252
    Abandoned 1987-11-20
11. Little Bonanza Mill

    Facility metal/non-metal · Griffin Ranch Partnership · MSHA ID 0502951
    Abandoned 1984-02-29
12. Nevada Mine

    Underground metal/non-metal · Laura Frances Riley · MSHA ID 0503583
    Abandoned 1985-07-05
13. Pit #1

    Surface metal/non-metal · Triple J Gravel · MSHA ID 0504900
    Abandoned 2010-08-09
14. Pitch Mine

    Surface metal/non-metal · Homestake Mining Company · MSHA ID 0502141
    Abandoned 1993-12-06
15. Portable Plant #1

    Surface metal/non-metal · Big Horn Crushing · MSHA ID 0504338
    Abandoned 1991-05-16
16. Rancho Rosado Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Rancho Rosado · MSHA ID 0504220
    Abandoned 1988-04-07
17. Rio Oro Mines

    Underground metal/non-metal · Rio Oro Mining & Milling Company · MSHA ID 0503825
    Abandoned 1986-03-31
18. Sargents Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503586
    Abandoned 1982-08-13
19. Skoglund Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Skoglund Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 0504782
    Abandoned 2024-06-18
20. South Carnero Road #675

    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Const Co Inc & Asphalt Gravel Prod Inc · MSHA ID 0503304
    Abandoned 1980-10-30
21. U752 Mobile Crusher

    Surface metal/non-metal · Saguache County Road and Bridge · MSHA ID 0504334
    Abandoned 2018-10-23
22. Villa Grove Turquoise Mine

    Surface metal/non-metal · Musick & Musick · MSHA ID 0501893
    Abandoned 1985-05-06

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
• 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
• 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.