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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cassia County, Idaho

Cassia County, Idaho has 274 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1959–2001, including 21 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 85 prospect pits; 8 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 27 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cassia 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)
274
Mine openings
21
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
27
8 features carry a name85 prospect pits39 quadrangle maps, published 1959–2001 1 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
    21 7.7%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    85 31.0%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    9 3.3%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    159 58.0%
Named features on the maps8 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Fish Creek Quarry Quarry area
Hazel Pine Mine Prospect Pit
Melcher Mine Adit
Myers Mine Adit
Ruth Mine Mine Shaft
Silver Hills Mine Adit
Tolman Mine Open Pit Mine
Worthington 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 Abandoned27 on register
  1. 7407
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gordon Paving Company Inc. · MSHA ID 1002139
    Abandoned
  2. BIRCH CREEK
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gold Star Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1002003
    Abandoned
  3. Black Pine Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Pioneer Nuclear Inc · MSHA ID 1001436
    Abandoned
  4. BLACK PINE MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Black Pine Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1001839
    Abandoned
  5. BLACK PINE MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Recovery I Inc · MSHA ID 1001901
    Abandoned
  6. Burley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kloepfer Inc · MSHA ID 1000751
    Abandoned
  7. Cassia County Roads (River Pit)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cassia County Roads · MSHA ID 1002013
    Abandoned
  8. Cold Creek Stone Company/Sherfey Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cold Creek Stone Company · MSHA ID 1002165
    Abandoned
  9. Cold Creek Stone/Junction Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cold Creek Stone Company · MSHA ID 1002164
    Abandoned
  10. Cunningham Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Aztex Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1002065
    Abandoned
  11. Curtis Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kloepfer Inc · MSHA ID 1000753
    Abandoned
  12. Gondola Hills Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Troutner & Sons Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1001780
    Abandoned
  13. Gordon Paving Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gordon Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 1000755
    Abandoned
  14. Jones Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Double Eagle Mines LLC · MSHA ID 1002269
    Abandoned
  15. Magic Valley Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Magic Valley Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1001785
    Abandoned
  16. Maverick Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Maverick Construction Company Incorporated · MSHA ID 1001679
    Abandoned
  17. MIDDLE MT. QUARRIES
    Surface metal/non-metal · Snake River Quartzite · MSHA ID 1001999
    Abandoned and Sealed
  18. Oakley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kloepfer Inc · MSHA ID 1000752
    Abandoned
  19. Oakley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Magic Valley Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1000758
    Abandoned
  20. Oakley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Beymer Paving Inc · MSHA ID 1000954
    Abandoned
  21. Oakley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Magic Valley Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 1001646
    Abandoned
  22. PORTABLE PLANT #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Loughmiller Reclamation Llc · MSHA ID 1001990
    Abandoned
  23. Robinson North Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Underdog Enterprises, LLC · MSHA ID 1002270
    Abandoned
  24. Rodriguez Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gillette Sharp Corporation · MSHA ID 1002060
    Abandoned
  25. Sand Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · High Output Construction · MSHA ID 1002275
    Abandoned
  26. Scanty Grease
    Surface metal/non-metal · BNE Investments Inc. · MSHA ID 1002267
    Abandoned
  27. Warm Springs
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sierra Stone Inc · MSHA ID 1001988
    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 85
Gravel Pit 56
Borrow Pit 28
Gravel Pit 27
Quarry 25
Borrow Pit 14
Adit 14
Open Pit Mine 7
Mine Shaft 7
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Sand Pit 2
Disturbed Surface 2
Sand Pit 1
Quarry 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.