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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Chippewa County, Michigan

Chippewa County, Michigan has 118 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1951–1976, including 6 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 1 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 28 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Chippewa 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)
118
Mine openings
6
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
28
1 features carry a name0 prospect pits33 quadrangle maps, published 1951–1976 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
    6 5.1%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    66 55.9%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    46 39.0%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Scott 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 Abandoned28 on register
  1. 390 FINLAY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montgomery Aggregate Products Company · MSHA ID 2003116
    Abandoned
  2. 443 CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montgomery Aggregate Products Company · MSHA ID 2003161
    Abandoned
  3. 544 CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montgomery Aggregate Products Company · MSHA ID 2002992
    Abandoned
  4. C & J PORTABLE 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · C & J AGGREGATE, INC. · MSHA ID 2003243
    Abandoned
  5. Chippewa County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mackinaw Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2001542
    Abandoned
  6. Chippewa County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Proksch Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002359
    Abandoned
  7. Chippewa County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Mahon Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2002463
    Abandoned
  8. CRUSHER NO. 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · L S & J Aggregate Inc · MSHA ID 2002857
    Abandoned
  9. Fornicola Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Anderson & Gallagher Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2002483
    Abandoned
  10. FOUNTAIN TRUCKING CRUSHING
    Surface metal/non-metal · FOUNTAIN TRUCKING, INC. · MSHA ID 2003375
    Abandoned
  11. GENE BROW & SONS INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gene Brow & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 2002990
    Abandoned
  12. Gene Brow & Sons, Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gene Brow & Sons, Inc. · MSHA ID 2002797
    Abandoned
  13. Gordon Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · James Gordon & Son · MSHA ID 2002013
    Abandoned
  14. Hopper Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · D & B Service Inc · MSHA ID 2002358
    Abandoned
  15. Montero Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montero Inc · MSHA ID 2002485
    Abandoned
  16. Osborn Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roy Osborn & Sons · MSHA ID 2002486
    Abandoned
  17. OZARK
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lechner Construction · MSHA ID 2003184
    Abandoned
  18. Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Burton Excavating, Inc. · MSHA ID 2003578
    Abandoned
  19. Sanderson Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · C G Sanderson Company · MSHA ID 2001827
    Abandoned
  20. Sanderson S & G
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sanderson Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2003249
    Abandoned
  21. Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2003073
    Abandoned
  22. SCREEN PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · VERN HUYCK TRUCKING, INC. · MSHA ID 2003117
    Abandoned
  23. Screen Plant 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2003577
    Abandoned
  24. Screen Plant II
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2003460
    Abandoned
  25. Stone Mountain
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stone Mountain Aggregates, LLC. · MSHA ID 2003646
    Abandoned
  26. SVEDALA CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montgomery Aggregate Products Company · MSHA ID 2003191
    Abandoned
  27. Tracked Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brow Crushing, Inc. · MSHA ID 2003658
    Abandoned
  28. VanSloten Crushing Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · VanSloten Crushing Inc. · MSHA ID 2003281
    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
Disturbed Surface - Pit 65
Gravel Pit 20
Gravel Pit 14
Adit 6
Sand Pit 3
Quarry 3
Quarry 3
Sand Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 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.