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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Calhoun County, Michigan

Calhoun County, Michigan has 130 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1919–1985. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 1 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. 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 Calhoun 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)
130
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits21 quadrangle maps, published 1919–1985 1 OSMRE problems, 1 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
    1 0.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    26 19.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    104 79.4%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems1 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Peoples Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed

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 Abandoned17 on register
  1. Battle Creek Gravel Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 2003398
    Abandoned
  2. Bronell Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002667
    Abandoned
  3. Calhoun County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bill Smith Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2002423
    Abandoned
  4. Carpenter Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ed Carpenter Company · MSHA ID 2002635
    Abandoned
  5. Dickman Road Wash Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Cole Brothers Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 2001040
    Abandoned
  6. EAGLE SAND PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002662
    Abandoned
  7. F Drive
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crandell Bros. Trucking Co · MSHA ID 2003643
    Abandoned
  8. Fredonia Aggregate, LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fredonia Aggregate, LLC · MSHA ID 2003633
    Abandoned
  9. Huntington Dredge & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nashville Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2002360
    Abandoned
  10. Marl Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Baldwin Marl Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002646
    Abandoned
  11. ROLL CRUSHER PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002803
    Abandoned
  12. Schaeffer Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ray'S Aggregate Company · MSHA ID 2002366
    Abandoned
  13. Tekonsha Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Emil Combs Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2000708
    Abandoned
  14. Telsmith Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Co Inc · MSHA ID 2002663
    Abandoned
  15. TELSMITH PLANT #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002664
    Abandoned
  16. Telsmith Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Co Inc · MSHA ID 2002807
    Abandoned
  17. Wash Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Battle Creek Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002776
    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 63
Gravel Pit 33
Disturbed Surface - Pit 12
Disturbed Surface 9
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Quarry 4
Sand Pit 3
P2 Vertical Openings 1
Borrow Pit 1
Other counties in MichiganAll 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.