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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Caribou County, Idaho

Caribou County, Idaho has 242 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1948–2005, including 6 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 127 prospect pits; 10 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 30 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Caribou 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)
242
Mine openings
6
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
30
10 features carry a name127 prospect pits30 quadrangle maps, published 1948–2005 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
    6 2.5%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    127 52.5%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    31 12.8%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    58 24.0%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    20 8.3%
Named features on the maps10 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Conda Mine Adit
Conda Mine Open Pit Mine area
Dewey Sulpher Mine Mine Shaft
Dewey Sulphur Mine Prospect Pit
Formation Cave Adit
G Portal (Conda Mine) Adit
Henry Strip Mine Strip Mine area
Idaho Sulpher Mine Open Pit Mine area
Idaho Sulpher Mine Open Pit Mine area
Idaho Sulphur Mine Prospect Pit

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 Abandoned30 on register
  1. Champ Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Conda Partnership · MSHA ID 1001593
    Abandoned
  2. Conda Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · J R Simplot Company · MSHA ID 1000094
    Abandoned
  3. CRUSHER #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smith Paving & Construction · MSHA ID 1001986
    Abandoned
  4. Dry Valley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Conda Partnership · MSHA ID 1000556
    Abandoned
  5. Dry Valley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · URS Corp · MSHA ID 1001873
    Abandoned
  6. EV, Ballard & Blackfoot Bridge Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · N.A. Degerstrom · MSHA ID 1001702
    Abandoned
  7. Henry Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monsanto Company · MSHA ID 1000091
    Abandoned
  8. Henry Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dravo-Soda Springs · MSHA ID 1001408
    Abandoned
  9. Kerr Mcgee Limestone Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Washington Corps · MSHA ID 1000680
    Abandoned
  10. L & M Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · L & M Farm Industries Inc · MSHA ID 1002309
    Abandoned
  11. Lanes Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · Conda Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1001830
    Abandoned
  12. Lanes Creek Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alumet Company · MSHA ID 1001361
    Abandoned
  13. Monsanto Plant-Ore Handling Area
    Facility metal/non-metal · Monsanto Company · MSHA ID 1001052
    Abandoned
  14. Monsanto Quartzite Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monsanto Company · MSHA ID 1000634
    Abandoned
  15. Mountain Fuel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Conda Partnership · MSHA ID 1001694
    Abandoned
  16. Mountain Fuel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Conda Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1001736
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Crushing Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Liddil Paving LLC · MSHA ID 1002250
    Abandoned
  18. Rasmussen Ranch
    Surface metal/non-metal · URS Washington Division · MSHA ID 1001936
    Abandoned
  19. RASMUSSEN RIDGE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rhone Poulenc North American Chemicals · MSHA ID 1001867
    Abandoned
  20. Rasmussen Valley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · ITAFOS Conda LLC · MSHA ID 1002177
    Abandoned
  21. Silocon International Ore
    Facility metal/non-metal · Silicon International Ore LLC · MSHA ID 1002017
    Abandoned
  22. Smith Portable Crushing
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bryant Smith Projects · MSHA ID 1002225
    Abandoned
  23. Soda Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Caribou County Road Dept · MSHA ID 1000964
    Abandoned
  24. Stoddard Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Outback Topsoil, LLC · MSHA ID 4202506
    Abandoned
  25. Ten Mile Pass Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Washington Group International Inc · MSHA ID 1001914
    Abandoned
  26. Tenmile Plant & Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lhoist North America of Arizona · MSHA ID 1001874
    Abandoned
  27. Tin Cup Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tin Cup Rock Products, L.L.C. · MSHA ID 1002254
    Abandoned
  28. TRAIL CANYON LIMESTONE MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vaughn Smith Construction Company · MSHA ID 1001806
    Abandoned
  29. Wooley Valley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Circle A Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1001380
    Abandoned
  30. Wooley Valley Operation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rhone-Poulenc Basic Chemicals Company · MSHA ID 1000095
    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
Prospect Pit 127
Gravel Pit 18
Disturbed Surface - Pit 15
Gravel Pit 13
Open Pit Mine 12
Settling Pond 11
Borrow Pit 9
Tailings - Pond 9
Borrow Pit 8
Adit 5
Cinder Pit 4
Cinder Pit 4
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Strip Mine 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Mine Shaft 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.