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Abandoned mines › Idaho
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Teton County, Idaho

Teton County, Idaho has 115 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1943–1979, including 38 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 32 prospect pits; 13 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 1 problems in the county, 1 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 7 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Teton 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)
115
Mine openings
38
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
1
MSHA mines marked abandoned
7
13 features carry a name32 prospect pits7 quadrangle maps, published 1943–1979 1 OSMRE problems, 0 reclaimed 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 33.6%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    32 27.6%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    45 38.8%
Named features on the maps13 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Bellcut Mine Adit
Brown Bear mine Mine Shaft
Brown Bear Mine Prospect Pit
Hillman Mine Adit
Idaho Mine Adit
Idaho Mine Prospect Pit
Mikesell Mine Adit
Mikesell Mine Prospect Pit
Packsaddle Mine Adit
Pintar Mine Adit
Pintar Mine Prospect Pit
Superior Mine Mine Shaft
Walton 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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems1 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Horseshoe Creek P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned7 on register
  1. Matkin Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Matkin Brothers Excavation Inc · MSHA ID 1001984
    Abandoned
  2. Pack Saddle Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · MD Landscaping & Excavating, Inc. · MSHA ID 1002253
    Abandoned
  3. Scot Green Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Scot Green Excavation LLC · MSHA ID 1002133
    Abandoned
  4. SHANE KAUFMAN CONST
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shane Kaufman Construction · MSHA ID 1001982
    Abandoned
  5. Shane Kaufman Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shane Kaufman · MSHA ID 1002059
    Abandoned
  6. Sutton Excavation Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sutton Excavation Inc. · MSHA ID 1002093
    Abandoned
  7. Victor Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Walters Ready Mix, Inc. · MSHA ID 1002026
    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
Adit 34
Prospect Pit 32
Gravel Pit 28
Borrow Pit 9
Gravel Pit 8
Mine Shaft 4
P2 Vertical Openings 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.