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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Latah County, Idaho

Latah County, Idaho has 137 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1960–1994, including 15 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 4 prospect pits; 16 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Latah 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)
137
Mine openings
15
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
16 features carry a name4 prospect pits31 quadrangle maps, published 1960–1994 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
    15 10.9%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    4 2.9%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    6 4.4%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    104 75.9%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    8 5.8%
Named features on the maps16 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Bonami No 1 Mine Adit
Carrico Mine Mine Shaft
Doer Mine Open Pit Mine
Gold Bug Mine Mine Shaft
Gold Hill Mine Adit
Last Chance Mine Open Pit Mine
Lost Wheelbarrow Mine Prospect Pit
Lost Wheelbarrow Mine Prospect Pit
Luella Mine Adit
Mizpah Mine Adit
Mizpah Mine Adit
Olson Mine Open Pit Mine
Settling Tank Settling Pond
Settling Tank Settling Pond
Silver King Mine Mine Shaft
White Cross 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 Abandoned20 on register
  1. Bovill Rock Quarry 429-015
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Forest Service · MSHA ID 1000981
    Abandoned
  2. Broyles Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arrow Construstion · MSHA ID 1001226
    Abandoned
  3. Cay'S Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cay'S Rock Crushing Inc · MSHA ID 1001662
    Abandoned
  4. Cedar Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Crushing Company · MSHA ID 1001550
    Abandoned
  5. Deary Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Crushing Company · MSHA ID 1001225
    Abandoned
  6. Gold Dust No 2 Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Gold Dust Mining · MSHA ID 1001690
    Abandoned
  7. Gold Queen
    Underground metal/non-metal · Gold Queen Mining & Milling · MSHA ID 1001765
    Abandoned
  8. Harvard Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Crushing Company · MSHA ID 1001539
    Abandoned
  9. Helmer Site
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hedco · MSHA ID 1001389
    Abandoned
  10. I-Minerals pilot project
    Surface metal/non-metal · I-minerals USA Inc · MSHA ID 1002353
    Abandoned
  11. Lt-106
    Surface metal/non-metal · L M Johnson Inc · MSHA ID 1001502
    Abandoned
  12. Miclasil Mine & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clayburn Industries Ltd · MSHA ID 1000068
    Abandoned
  13. Past Time
    Underground metal/non-metal · Past Time Mines · MSHA ID 1001689
    Abandoned
  14. Portable 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · C K Excavation, L.L.C. · MSHA ID 1002359
    Abandoned
  15. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lloyd Logging Inc · MSHA ID 1001762
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Century Rock Products · MSHA ID 1001850
    Abandoned
  17. Potlatch Corporation Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · North Latah County Highway Department · MSHA ID 1001105
    Abandoned
  18. Powerscreen Premiertrak 400
    Surface metal/non-metal · M.A DeAtley Construction · MSHA ID 1002340
    Abandoned
  19. Troy Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · United States Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 1000640
    Abandoned
  20. Whitcomb Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · 4-G Contracting · MSHA ID 1002330
    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 32
Borrow Pit 17
Gravel Pit 16
Adit 12
Clay Pit 10
Quarry 9
Quarry 8
Tailings - Undifferentiated 5
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Clay Pit 4
Open Pit Mine 4
Prospect Pit 4
Borrow Pit 3
Mine Shaft 3
Settling Pond 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Tailings - Dredge 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.