Abandoned mines in Keweenaw County, Michigan
Keweenaw County, Michigan has 86 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1946–1985, including 59 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 1 prospect pits; 18 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 3 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.
Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Keweenaw 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)
- 86
- Mine openings
- 59
- OSMRE problems unreclaimed
- 0
- MSHA mines marked abandoned
- 3
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59 68.6%Mine openingsshafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
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1 1.2%Prospect pits and trenchesshallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
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10 11.6%Mines and surface workingslabelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
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16 18.6%Dumps, tailings, spoil and gobwhat mining left above ground
| Name on map | Feature |
|---|---|
| Ahmeek Mine | Mine Dump area |
| Ahmeek Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Copper Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Datolite Mine | Prospect Pit |
| Gratiot Mine | Mine Dump area |
| Gratiot Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Haytown Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Island Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Lucky Bay Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Minong Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Minong Mine | Open Pit Mine |
| Prehistoric Mine (Restored) | Open Pit Mine |
| Ransom Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Saginaw Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Siskowit Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Smithwick Mine | Mine Shaft |
| Wendigo Mines | Adit |
| Wendigo Mines | Adit |
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.
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543-SAbandoned 1996-07-01Underground metal/non-metal · Keweenaw Copper Company Inc · MSHA ID 2002950
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Keweenaw County PitsAbandoned 1985-09-23Surface metal/non-metal · Keweenaw County Road Commission · MSHA ID 2001916
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Mohawk Sand & Gravel, Inc.Abandoned 2003-08-19Surface metal/non-metal · Mohawk Sand & Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 2003271
Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.
| Feature type | Features |
|---|---|
| Mine Shaft | 56 |
| Mine Dump | 16 |
| Open Pit Mine | 7 |
| Disturbed Surface - Pit | 3 |
| Adit | 3 |
| Prospect Pit | 1 |
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.