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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Clearwater County, Idaho

Clearwater County, Idaho has 89 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1938–1994, including 13 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 14 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 23 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Clearwater 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)
89
Mine openings
13
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
23
14 features carry a name0 prospect pits27 quadrangle maps, published 1938–1994 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
    13 14.6%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    9 10.1%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    66 74.2%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 1.1%
Named features on the maps14 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
American Mine Open Pit Mine
Campbell Mine Mine Shaft
Crawford Mine Open Pit Mine
Crawford Mine Open Pit Mine
Crawford Mine Open Pit Mine
Democrat Mine Open Pit Mine
Democrat Mine Open Pit Mine
Democrat Mine Open Pit Mine
Frenchman Mine Open Pit Mine
Jericho Mine Mine Shaft
Oxford Mine Mine Shaft
Pioneer Mine Open Pit Mine
Pistol Grip Mine Adit
Red Cloud 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 Abandoned23 on register
  1. Bertha Hill Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Crushing Company · MSHA ID 1001598
    Abandoned
  2. Bond Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Gold Pan Dan LLC · MSHA ID 1002047
    Abandoned
  3. Cavendish Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Seubert Excavators Inc · MSHA ID 1001230
    Abandoned
  4. Cow Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Potlatch Corp · MSHA ID 1001231
    Abandoned
  5. Cummings Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · William G Cummings Inc · MSHA ID 1001267
    Abandoned
  6. Cw-69s Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Transportation Department · MSHA ID 1001077
    Abandoned
  7. Ferry Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Atley Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001403
    Abandoned
  8. Fords Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · H & H Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 1001268
    Abandoned
  9. Freeman Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Seubert Excavators Inc · MSHA ID 1001429
    Abandoned
  10. Headquarters Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Atley Company Inc · MSHA ID 1000973
    Abandoned
  11. Idaho Lime
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rondys, Inc. dba Idaho Lime · MSHA ID 1002387
    Abandoned
  12. Isabella Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grant Construction Company · MSHA ID 1001467
    Abandoned
  13. Jaype Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Forest Service · MSHA ID 1001244
    Abandoned
  14. Jule
    Underground metal/non-metal · Elwood Stacy · MSHA ID 1001851
    Abandoned
  15. Lolo Placer
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lucky Seven Mining Corp · MSHA ID 1001463
    Abandoned
  16. Mussel Shell Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Atley Company Inc · MSHA ID 1000947
    Abandoned
  17. Old Camp Y Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Poppie Corp · MSHA ID 1001104
    Abandoned
  18. Oro-Fino Placer Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Oro-Fino Placer Inc · MSHA ID 1001611
    Abandoned
  19. Orofino Creek Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yellow Eagle Mining Inc · MSHA ID 1001869
    Abandoned
  20. Orogrande Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Atley Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001402
    Abandoned
  21. Pit #1 Or Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Triplett Logging Inc · MSHA ID 1001442
    Abandoned
  22. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ebert Crushing · MSHA ID 1001846
    Abandoned
  23. Sheep Mountain Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Forest Service · MSHA ID 1001313
    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 46
Open Pit Mine 9
Adit 9
Quarry 7
Borrow Pit 6
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Mine Shaft 4
Tailings - Dredge 1
Quarry 1
Gravel 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.