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Abandoned mines › Maine
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Piscataquis County, Maine

Piscataquis County, Maine has 222 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1940–1989, including 2 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 7 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 17 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Piscataquis 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)
222
Mine openings
2
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
7 features carry a name0 prospect pits77 quadrangle maps, published 1940–1989 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
    2 0.9%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 1.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    216 97.3%
Named features on the maps7 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Egery Quarry Quarry
Farm Quarry No 1 Quarry
Farm Quarry No 2 Quarry
Farm Quarry No 2 Quarry
Hillside Quarry Mine Shaft
Kineo Quarry Quarry
Kineo Quarry Quarry

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 Abandoned17 on register
  1. AUCDIN / PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hayes Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 1700669
    Abandoned
  2. BPM SCREEN
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barrett Paving Materials Inc · MSHA ID 1700691
    Abandoned
  3. Brownville Junction Pit and Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bishop Concrete LLC · MSHA ID 1700290
    Abandoned
  4. Colonial Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · CARL VAINIO · MSHA ID 1700785
    Abandoned
  5. COVA RUBERTS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sheldon Slate Products Company Inc · MSHA ID 1700246
    Abandoned
  6. Kennedy Slate Mine Monson
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kennedy Slate Mine Monson · MSHA ID 1700580
    Abandoned
  7. Milo Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ames Construction Inc. · MSHA ID 1700975
    Abandoned
  8. MS & D Gravel LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · MS & D Gravel LLC · MSHA ID 1700670
    Abandoned
  9. PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rowe Construction · MSHA ID 1700409
    Abandoned
  10. PORTABLE PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Indian Hill Inc · MSHA ID 1700593
    Abandoned
  11. Portable Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Haley's Inc. · MSHA ID 1701101
    Abandoned
  12. Portland Monson Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Portland-Monson Slate Company · MSHA ID 1700186
    Abandoned
  13. Sangerville Pit and Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Haley's Inc · MSHA ID 1700797
    Abandoned
  14. Sangerville Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Haley's Inc · MSHA ID 1700206
    Abandoned
  15. SQUAW PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Woodlands · MSHA ID 1700690
    Abandoned
  16. THERIAULT/ABBOT PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mike Theriault Construction · MSHA ID 1700701
    Abandoned
  17. WILLIAM W. LONDON & SON
    Surface metal/non-metal · William W London & Son · MSHA ID 1700614
    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 86
Gravel Pit 79
Sand and Gravel Pit 20
Shale Pit 10
Quarry 7
Shale Pit 7
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Mine Shaft 2
Strip Mine 1
Other counties in MaineAll 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.