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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Gem County, Idaho

Gem County, Idaho has 272 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1953–1985, including 29 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 209 prospect pits; 6 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Gem 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)
272
Mine openings
29
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
6 features carry a name209 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1953–1985 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
    29 10.7%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    209 76.8%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    2 0.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    31 11.4%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.4%
Named features on the maps6 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Aspen Mine Adit
Gem State Mine Adit
IXL Mine Mine Shaft
Liberty Mine Mine Shaft
Middleman Mine Adit
Monroe Mine Mine Shaft

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 Abandoned19 on register
  1. 1A/1B
    Surface metal/non-metal · Universal Construction Inc · MSHA ID 1001970
    Abandoned
  2. Barnes Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · City Transfer Redimix Inc · MSHA ID 1001367
    Abandoned
  3. Brights Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bright Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 1002022
    Abandoned
  4. Brownlee Mountain Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brownlee Mountain Gravel · MSHA ID 1002109
    Abandoned
  5. Ferguson
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferguson and Sons Construction · MSHA ID 1002181
    Abandoned
  6. Fr 52-S Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · H-K Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 1001304
    Abandoned
  7. Hawk Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hawk Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1002245
    Abandoned
  8. Idaho Rock Products
    Surface metal/non-metal · All American Excavating · MSHA ID 1002108
    Abandoned
  9. King
    Surface metal/non-metal · King 2070 Mining LLC · MSHA ID 1002158
    Abandoned
  10. Lacey Rock & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lacey Rock & Gravel · MSHA ID 1002062
    Abandoned
  11. Longhair Mine No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joe Vaitkevick · MSHA ID 1001319
    Abandoned
  12. Longhair Mine No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joe Vaitkevick · MSHA ID 1001320
    Abandoned
  13. Pearl Au Project
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morning Star Mining, LLC · MSHA ID 1002201
    Abandoned
  14. Pearl Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · City Transfer Redi-Mix · MSHA ID 1001637
    Abandoned
  15. Pearl Silver Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Moneca Mine Development Ltd · MSHA ID 1001435
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Church Enterprises · MSHA ID 1002029
    Abandoned
  17. Pretty Patty
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joe Vaitkevick · MSHA ID 1001321
    Abandoned
  18. Spring Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · CMCI · MSHA ID 1002362
    Abandoned
  19. WASH PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Superior Construction & Excavating Inc. · MSHA ID 1002266
    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 209
Adit 21
Gravel Pit 16
Borrow Pit 9
Mine Shaft 8
Gravel Pit 3
Quarry 2
Open Pit Mine 1
Sand Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Tailings - Pond 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.