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Abandoned mines › Michigan
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Saginaw County, Michigan

Saginaw County, Michigan has 237 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1917–1975. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 25 problems in the county, 8 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 12 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Saginaw 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)
237
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
8
MSHA mines marked abandoned
12
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1917–1975 25 OSMRE problems, 17 reclaimed 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
    18 6.9%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    29 11.1%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    208 79.4%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 1.1%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 0.4%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    3 1.1%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems25 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Aurora P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Banner P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Bliss Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Carr P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Jamestown P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Mi - Saginaw - Fea P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Mi - Saginaw - Fea P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage #2 P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage #2 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage #2 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage #2 P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage #8 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage #8 P3 Gobs Reclamation Pending
Robert Gage #9 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage No.3 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage No.3 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Robert Gage Number 1 P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Robert Gage Number 4 P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Saginaw City P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Saginaw City P3 Other In Reclamation
Shiawassee P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
St. Charles - Garfield P2 Vertical Openings In Reclamation
Swan P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Uncle Henry No.2 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Uncle Henry No.2 P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned12 on register
  1. 380 FINLEY SCREENER
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Material Inc · MSHA ID 2002913
    Abandoned
  2. AMBROSE RD PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chippewa Contracting Inc · MSHA ID 2003088
    Abandoned
  3. Carrollton Limekiln Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Michigan Sugar Company · MSHA ID 2002274
    Abandoned
  4. Carrollton Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Saginaw Rock Products Company · MSHA ID 2002299
    Abandoned
  5. CEDAR RAPIDS COMMANDER 555 CRUSH
    Surface metal/non-metal · V1-Aggregates · MSHA ID 2003130
    Abandoned
  6. PLANT 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Material Inc · MSHA ID 2002923
    Abandoned
  7. Portable Cedar Rapids Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quality Excavating & Equipment Leasing · MSHA ID 2002808
    Abandoned
  8. Portable Telsmith Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quality Excavating & Equipment Leasing · MSHA ID 2003276
    Abandoned
  9. Saginaw Distribution Terminal
    Facility metal/non-metal · National Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 2002279
    Abandoned
  10. Saginaw Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sargent Sand Company · MSHA ID 2000834
    Abandoned
  11. Saginaw Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Wirt Stone Company · MSHA ID 2002298
    Abandoned
  12. Saginaw Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Saginaw Rock Products Company · MSHA ID 2002306
    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
Sand Pit 141
Gravel Pit 29
Disturbed Surface - Pit 20
Sand Pit 19
P2 Vertical Openings 16
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 13
Open Pit Mine 9
Gravel Pit 6
P3 Gobs 3
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P1 Subsidence 1
P1 Portals 1
P3 Other 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.