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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Elmore County, Idaho

Elmore County, Idaho has 345 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1947–1992, including 49 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 116 prospect pits; 8 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 34 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Elmore 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)
345
Mine openings
49
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
34
8 features carry a name116 prospect pits51 quadrangle maps, published 1947–1992 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
    49 14.2%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    116 33.6%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 1.2%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    153 44.3%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    23 6.7%
Named features on the maps8 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Bonaparte Mine Adit
Daley Con Mines Adit
Eureka Cave Adit
Franklin Mine Adit
Marsh Creek Mine Adit
Minerva Mine Adit
Monarch Mine Adit
Tolache Mine Mine Dump 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 Abandoned34 on register
  1. Atlanta Mountain
    Surface metal/non-metal · Atlanta Gold Corp · MSHA ID 1002144
    Abandoned
  2. Atlanta Project
    Underground metal/non-metal · Ramrod Gold (Usa) Inc · MSHA ID 1001763
    Abandoned
  3. Baltimore Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Middle Fork Associates · MSHA ID 1001569
    Abandoned
  4. Blackstone Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Richwell Resources Ltd · MSHA ID 1001594
    Abandoned
  5. Burnt Sage -Grandview- Clay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pullman Brick Company Inc · MSHA ID 1000060
    Abandoned
  6. Canyon Creek Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Rick Hanson · MSHA ID 1001523
    Abandoned
  7. Castle Wood Products
    Surface metal/non-metal · Castle Wood Products · MSHA ID 1002079
    Abandoned
  8. Concentrating Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Boise Mining & Milling Inc · MSHA ID 1001595
    Abandoned
  9. El 109
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northwest Aggregates Of Idaho Inc · MSHA ID 1001409
    Abandoned
  10. El-Oro
    Surface metal/non-metal · Watchman Exploration Company Inc · MSHA ID 1001440
    Abandoned
  11. Fisher Property
    Surface metal/non-metal · Candelaria Metals Inc · MSHA ID 1001518
    Abandoned
  12. Franklin Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Cook's RMC · MSHA ID 1002217
    Abandoned
  13. Golden Chariot
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pot Luck Mining · MSHA ID 1001635
    Abandoned
  14. Golden Stringer Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · E T Seaton · MSHA ID 1000145
    Abandoned
  15. Hercules Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Hercules Mining Company · MSHA ID 1001538
    Abandoned
  16. Hy Country Exploration Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Hy Country Exploration Partnership · MSHA ID 1001498
    Abandoned
  17. Lucky Mac Venture
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lucky Mac Venture · MSHA ID 1001514
    Abandoned
  18. M&M China Lode
    Surface metal/non-metal · Machinery Operations & Excavation Co. (M.O.E. Co.) · MSHA ID 1002248
    Abandoned
  19. Middle Fork Placer
    Surface metal/non-metal · Orogrande Gold Inc · MSHA ID 1001764
    Abandoned
  20. Mountain Home Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boise Paving & Asphalt Company · MSHA ID 1001366
    Abandoned
  21. Mountain Home Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mountain Home Redi-Mix Inc · MSHA ID 1001712
    Abandoned
  22. Mountain Home Redi-Mix Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mountain Home Redi-Mix Inc · MSHA ID 1001705
    Abandoned
  23. Mt Home Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Materials & Construction · MSHA ID 1000326
    Abandoned
  24. Neal
    Surface metal/non-metal · Neal Development, LP · MSHA ID 1002262
    Abandoned
  25. P T L A Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · P T L A Mining Company · MSHA ID 1001504
    Abandoned
  26. PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wilson & Dodge Inc · MSHA ID 1001276
    Abandoned
  27. Shamrock Gold
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shamrock Gold Inc · MSHA ID 1001786
    Abandoned
  28. Snake Mountain
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lava Flow Products Inc · MSHA ID 1001727
    Abandoned
  29. State Pit El 109
    Surface metal/non-metal · Washington Construction Company · MSHA ID 1001382
    Abandoned
  30. Tahoma Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Tahoma Mining Company · MSHA ID 1001250
    Abandoned
  31. Tait Aggregate
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tait Aggregate & Company · MSHA ID 1001920
    Abandoned
  32. Ts #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Inter-Mountain Excavation · MSHA ID 1001481
    Abandoned
  33. Ventures West Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ventures West Mining & Survey Company · MSHA ID 1001683
    Abandoned
  34. W & D Glenns Ferry Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wilson & Dodge Inc · MSHA ID 1000364
    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 116
Gravel Pit 49
Borrow Pit 47
Adit 46
Gravel Pit 30
Tailings - Dredge 14
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 14
Borrow Pit 11
Tailings - Undifferentiated 5
Mine Dump 4
Mine Shaft 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Sand Pit 1
Strip Mine 1
Cinder 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.