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

Abandoned mines in Bingham County, Idaho

Bingham County, Idaho has 154 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1955–1998, including 34 prospect pits; 5 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 14 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Bingham 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)
154
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
5 features carry a name34 prospect pits25 quadrangle maps, published 1955–1998 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    34 22.1%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    10 6.5%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    110 71.4%
Named features on the maps5 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Gay Mine Open Pit Mine area
Gay Mine Open Pit Mine area
Gay Mine Open Pit Mine area
Gay Mine Open Pit Mine area
Gay Mine Open Pit Mine area

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 Abandoned14 on register
  1. 2100 Chieftan
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Construction and Excavation, LLC · MSHA ID 1002390
    Abandoned
  2. Blackfoot
    Surface metal/non-metal · East Idaho Gravel · MSHA ID 1002156
    Abandoned
  3. BLACKFOOT PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monroc Inc · MSHA ID 1000350
    Abandoned
  4. Gay Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · J R Simplot Company · MSHA ID 1000093
    Abandoned
  5. Kelley's Gravel Inc
    Surface metal/non-metal · S&R Dirt Works · MSHA ID 1001730
    Abandoned
  6. Miller Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tiger Asphalt Inc · MSHA ID 1001374
    Abandoned
  7. Plant 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mickelsen Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1002143
    Abandoned
  8. Plant 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mickelsen Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 1002186
    Abandoned
  9. Plant 5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mickelsen Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1002215
    Abandoned
  10. Portable Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gale Lim Construction LLC · MSHA ID 1001857
    Abandoned
  11. Portable Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gale Lim Construction LLC · MSHA ID 1002154
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Plant #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gale Lim Construction LLC · MSHA ID 1002206
    Abandoned
  13. State Pit Bg-68-S
    Surface metal/non-metal · H-K Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 1001327
    Abandoned
  14. Trego Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mickelson Construction Co Inc · MSHA ID 1002033
    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
Borrow Pit 43
Prospect Pit 34
Gravel Pit 25
Gravel Pit 22
Borrow Pit 11
Open Pit Mine 5
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Cinder Pit 2
Open Pit Mine 2
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.