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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Iron County, Michigan

Iron County, Michigan has 146 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1944–1999, including 28 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 5 prospect pits; 30 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 10 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Iron 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)
146
Mine openings
28
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
10
30 features carry a name5 prospect pits26 quadrangle maps, published 1944–1999 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
    28 19.2%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    5 3.4%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    51 34.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    51 34.9%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    11 7.5%
Named features on the maps30 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
6 Mile Gravel Pit Gravel Pit area
Bates Mine Mine Dump area
Bates Mine Mine Dump area
Bates Mine Mine Shaft
Bengal Mine Mine Shaft
Book Mine Open Pit Mine area
Cardiff Mine Mine Shaft
Davidson No 3 Mine Mine Shaft
Dober No 2 Mine Mine Shaft
Forbes Mine Mine Shaft
Hiawatha No 1 Mine Mine Shaft
Hiawatha No 2 Mine Mine Shaft
Homer Mine Mine Dump area
Homer Mine Mine Shaft
James Mine Mine Dump area
James Mine Mine Shaft
Minckler Mine Mine Shaft
Monongahela Mine Open Pit Mine area
Porter Mine Open Pit Mine
Rogers Mine Mine Dump area
Rogers Mine Mine Shaft
Shafer Mine Open Pit Mine area
Sherwood Mine Mine Dump area
Sherwood Mine Mine Shaft
Spies Mine Mine Dump area
Spies Mine Mine Dump area
Spies Mine Mine Shaft
Tobin Mine Open Pit Mine area
Warner Mine Open Pit Mine
Wauseca Mine Mine Shaft

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 Abandoned10 on register
  1. #1402 WASHPLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schinella-Mottes Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002832
    Abandoned
  2. Cone Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Proksch Construction Company · MSHA ID 2001764
    Abandoned
  3. Iron County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Iron County Road Commission · MSHA ID 2002049
    Abandoned
  4. Iron River Lbr & Fuel Co Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Henry Vantaggi · MSHA ID 2002254
    Abandoned
  5. MOCORP 424 (wash plant)
    Surface metal/non-metal · MOCORP, INC. · MSHA ID 2003564
    Abandoned
  6. PORTABLE CRUSHER #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Mahon Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2002268
    Abandoned
  7. PORTABLE PLANT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hebert Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002955
    Abandoned
  8. Roll Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Proksch Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002351
    Abandoned
  9. Sherwood Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Inland Steel Mining Company · MSHA ID 2000428
    Abandoned
  10. Williams Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Williams Redi Mix Inc · MSHA ID 2002364
    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
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 34
Mine Shaft 28
Gravel Pit 23
Gravel Pit 20
Mine Dump 11
Open Pit Mine 6
Prospect Pit 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Disturbed Surface - Pit 4
Quarry 2
Open Pit Mine 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Quarry 1
Sand 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.