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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ontonagon County, Michigan

Ontonagon County, Michigan has 205 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1949–1999, including 31 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 21 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 9 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ontonagon 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)
205
Mine openings
31
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
9
21 features carry a name0 prospect pits33 quadrangle maps, published 1949–1999 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
    31 15.1%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    25 12.2%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    132 64.4%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    17 8.3%
Named features on the maps21 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Adventure Mine Adit
Adventure Mine Mine Dump area
Caledonia Mine Adit
Carp Lake Mine Adit
Carp Lake Mine Mine Shaft
Cuyahoga Mine Mine Shaft
Cuyahoga Mine Open Pit Mine
Indiana Mine Mine Dump area
Indiana Mine Mine Shaft
Lake Mine Mine Dump area
Lake Mine Open Pit Mine
Norwich Mine Adit
Old Lafayette Mine Mine Shaft
Union Mine Mine Shaft
Union Mine Open Pit Mine area
White Pine Extension Mine Mine Shaft
White Pine Extension Mine Open Pit Mine
White Pine Mine Adit
White Pine Mine Mine Shaft
White Pine Mine Mine Shaft
White Pine 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 Abandoned9 on register
  1. Caledonia
    Underground metal/non-metal · Red Metal Explorations, Inc. · MSHA ID 2002731
    Abandoned
  2. Ontonagon County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fox Valley Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002462
    Abandoned
  3. Ontonagon County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schinella-Mottes Construction Company · MSHA ID 2002613
    Abandoned
  4. Ontonagon County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Globe Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2002678
    Abandoned
  5. Ontonagon County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · A Lindberg & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 2002711
    Abandoned
  6. Ontonagon County Pits - Amber Lake
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ontonagon County Raod Commission · MSHA ID 2000677
    Abandoned
  7. Pestka Construction Incorporated Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pestka Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2002681
    Abandoned
  8. WHITE PINE MINE
    Underground metal/non-metal · Copper Range Company · MSHA ID 2000371
    Abandoned
  9. White Pine Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · George Hocking Construction Company · MSHA ID 2000994
    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
Gravel Pit 42
Mine Shaft 26
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 18
Sand Pit 13
Tailings - Undifferentiated 10
Adit 5
Mine Dump 5
Quarry 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Borrow Pit 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Sand Pit 2
Tailings - Pond 2
Open Pit Mine 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.