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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Benewah County, Idaho

Benewah County, Idaho has 105 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1954–1995, including 2 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 5 prospect pits; 1 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 21 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Benewah 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)
105
Mine openings
2
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
1 features carry a name5 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1954–1995 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
    2 1.9%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    5 4.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    93 88.6%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 4.8%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Old Rainbow 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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned21 on register
  1. Carpenter Creek Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Emerald Creek Garnet Milling Company Inc · MSHA ID 1000635
    Abandoned
  2. Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · North Idaho Drilling Incorporated · MSHA ID 1002131
    Abandoned
  3. Dement Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peter Dement Owner · MSHA ID 1001067
    Abandoned
  4. Eagle Silver
    Underground metal/non-metal · Pugh Brothers Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1001792
    Abandoned
  5. Ellis Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Plummer Gateway Highway District · MSHA ID 1001215
    Abandoned
  6. Emerald Creek Garnet Ltd
    Surface metal/non-metal · Emerald Creek Garnet Ltd · MSHA ID 1001564
    Abandoned
  7. Emerald Creek Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Emerald Creek Garnet Milling Company Inc · MSHA ID 1000562
    Abandoned
  8. Fernwood Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Emerald Creek Garnet Milling Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001567
    Abandoned
  9. Fernwood Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cay'S Rock Crushing Inc · MSHA ID 1001474
    Abandoned
  10. Joseph Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Robert Russell Owner · MSHA ID 1000388
    Abandoned
  11. Mauro Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · M & P Crushing · MSHA ID 1001066
    Abandoned
  12. Plummer Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Plummer Gateway Highway District · MSHA ID 1000346
    Abandoned
  13. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Patriot Construction & Rock Products LLC · MSHA ID 1001719
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · D and A Crushing · MSHA ID 1002180
    Abandoned
  15. Pugh Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pugh Brothers Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1000676
    Abandoned
  16. Pugh Portable Unit #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pugh Brothers Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 1002103
    Abandoned
  17. Specialty Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Specialty Excavating · MSHA ID 1002244
    Abandoned
  18. St Maries Peak Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pugh Brothers Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1001277
    Abandoned
  19. State Pit 505-031
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Highway Department · MSHA ID 1001070
    Abandoned
  20. State Pit B W 84s
    Surface metal/non-metal · Inland Asphalt Company · MSHA ID 1000968
    Abandoned
  21. Tensed Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mutual Materials Company · MSHA ID 1000542
    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 49
Borrow Pit 32
Gravel Pit 9
Tailings - Dredge 5
Prospect Pit 5
Adit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Clay Pit 1
Other counties in IdahoAll 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.