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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Clark County, Idaho

Clark County, Idaho has 244 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1988, including 39 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 120 prospect pits; 1 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 9 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Clark 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)
244
Mine openings
39
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
9
1 features carry a name120 prospect pits27 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1988 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
    39 16.0%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    120 49.2%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    12 4.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    73 29.9%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Copper 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 Abandoned9 on register
  1. CONSOLATION NO. 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bob Thompson · MSHA ID 1001930
    Abandoned
  2. Continental Ivory Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Travertine Corp · MSHA ID 1000050
    Abandoned
  3. Dalling Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mountain West Products LLC · MSHA ID 1002012
    Abandoned
  4. Idaho Travertine Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Earl Wilcox Contractor · MSHA ID 1000370
    Abandoned
  5. JEPPESEN WILSON MINING CO
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jeppesen Wilson Mining Company · MSHA ID 1001958
    Abandoned
  6. Montana Travertine Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Minerals Company · MSHA ID 1001411
    Abandoned
  7. Opal Mountain Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jeppesen & Wilson Co · MSHA ID 1000566
    Abandoned
  8. SPENCER OPAL MINES
    Surface metal/non-metal · Spencer Opal Mines · MSHA ID 1000565
    Abandoned
  9. Walnut Travertine Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Travertine Corp · MSHA ID 1002005
    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 120
Adit 29
Borrow Pit 25
Gravel Pit 22
Mine Shaft 10
Borrow Pit 10
Open Pit Mine 9
Gravel Pit 8
Open Pit Mine 3
Quarry 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Quarry 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.