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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Eaton County, Michigan

Eaton County, Michigan has 118 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1945–1985. MSHA's register carries 23 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Eaton 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
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
23
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits19 quadrangle maps, published 1945–1985 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    19 16.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    99 83.9%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned23 on register
  1. BELLEVUE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bellevue Crushed Stone · MSHA ID 2003145
    Abandoned
  2. BELLEVUE LIMESTONE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bellevue Limestone Inc · MSHA ID 2002877
    Abandoned
  3. Bellevue Stone Products
    Surface metal/non-metal · Heritage Resources Inc · MSHA ID 2003215
    Abandoned
  4. C E F Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crandell Brothers Trucking Company · MSHA ID 2002482
    Abandoned
  5. C&S SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · C & S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2002931
    Abandoned
  6. CP1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crandell Bros. Trucking · MSHA ID 2003485
    Abandoned
  7. Davis Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carl Schlegel Inc · MSHA ID 2000885
    Abandoned
  8. Eaton County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cole Brothers Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 2002412
    Abandoned
  9. Eaton County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bill Smith Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2002424
    Abandoned
  10. ELLET ENTERPRISES INC MINING DIV
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ellet Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 2003217
    Abandoned
  11. Gencor
    Surface metal/non-metal · Heritage Resources, Inc. · MSHA ID 2003258
    Abandoned
  12. Grand Ledge Clay Products
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grand Ledge Clay Products · MSHA ID 2000609
    Abandoned
  13. Ledges Pit 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ledges Sand & Gravel, LLC · MSHA ID 2003522
    Abandoned
  14. Mc Gary Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crandell Brothers Trucking Company · MSHA ID 2002598
    Abandoned
  15. McLean/Stover Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · A McLean & Son Trucking Inc · MSHA ID 2003479
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Plant 4242
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rieth-Riley Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002570
    Abandoned
  17. Potterville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pryor Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2000819
    Abandoned
  18. Potterville Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · CD Hughes Inc · MSHA ID 2003369
    Abandoned
  19. Sheren Brothers Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sheren Brothers Excavating · MSHA ID 2002669
    Abandoned
  20. SPEC-CIFIC FABRICATION INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Spec-Cific Fabrication Inc · MSHA ID 2003126
    Abandoned
  21. Trommel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gale Briggs, Inc. · MSHA ID 2002859
    Abandoned
  22. TROMMEL #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Heritage Resources Inc · MSHA ID 2003179
    Abandoned
  23. Wear Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pryor Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2002596
    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 67
Disturbed Surface - Pit 17
Gravel Pit 16
Sand Pit 6
Quarry 4
Clay Pit 2
Quarry 2
Sand Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Clay 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.