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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Kalamazoo County, Michigan

Kalamazoo County, Michigan has 203 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1947–1985. MSHA's register carries 21 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Kalamazoo 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)
203
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1947–1985 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
    15 7.4%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    188 92.6%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned21 on register
  1. 4th Street Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Construction Company · MSHA ID 2000812
    Abandoned
  2. ALLIS-CHALMERS PLANT #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bill Smith S&G · MSHA ID 2002718
    Abandoned
  3. Anson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rieth-Riley Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002708
    Abandoned
  4. Austin Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Austin Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2003337
    Abandoned
  5. Byrne Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cole Brothers Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 2002379
    Abandoned
  6. Finlay Construction
    Surface metal/non-metal · Balkema Inc · MSHA ID 2002866
    Abandoned
  7. Gordine Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Snyder Excavating Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002572
    Abandoned
  8. Henry Balkema Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Henry Balkema Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2001588
    Abandoned
  9. Kalamazoo County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cole Brothers Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 2002408
    Abandoned
  10. Kalamazoo County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · B A Contractors · MSHA ID 2002518
    Abandoned
  11. Kalamazoo County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Williams Brothers Asphalt Paving Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002564
    Abandoned
  12. Kalamazoo Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Aggregates Corp · MSHA ID 2000664
    Abandoned
  13. Modern
    Surface metal/non-metal · Modern Septic Tank Engineers Inc · MSHA ID 2002824
    Abandoned
  14. NB #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bill Smith S&G · MSHA ID 2002928
    Abandoned
  15. Portable Plant #101
    Surface metal/non-metal · Aggregate Resources, Inc. · MSHA ID 2003288
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Plant 107
    Surface metal/non-metal · Aggregate Resources, Inc. · MSHA ID 2003285
    Abandoned
  17. Prairie Ronde Plant #319
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Aggregates Corp · MSHA ID 2002845
    Abandoned
  18. Ravine Road Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002368
    Abandoned
  19. Seybert Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hoffman Bros inc · MSHA ID 2003291
    Abandoned
  20. Stoney Lake Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stony Lake Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2000850
    Abandoned
  21. Triple B Aggregates
    Surface metal/non-metal · Triple B Aggregates · MSHA ID 2003174
    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 128
Gravel Pit 48
Disturbed Surface - Pit 11
Sand Pit 5
Sand and Gravel Pit 3
Disturbed Surface 3
Marl Pit 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Marl 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.