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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Becker County, Minnesota

Becker County, Minnesota has 139 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1959–1982. MSHA's register carries 16 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Becker 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)
139
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits32 quadrangle maps, published 1959–1982 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
    8 5.8%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    131 94.2%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned16 on register
  1. Bivitec Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakes Paving Inc · MSHA ID 2103353
    Abandoned
  2. Boit Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boit Excavating LLC · MSHA ID 2103887
    Abandoned
  3. Crusher #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ernest C Anderson Gravel & Ready Mixed Inc · MSHA ID 2103511
    Abandoned
  4. HHE Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · H & S Contracting, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103852
    Abandoned
  5. LONG PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Driveway Service Inc · MSHA ID 2101468
    Abandoned
  6. Long Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Thorson Inc · MSHA ID 2101801
    Abandoned
  7. Long Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duininck Brothers & Gilchrist · MSHA ID 2102793
    Abandoned
  8. Metry Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Metry Septic & Excavating Inc. · MSHA ID 2104090
    Abandoned
  9. Nester Plant And Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Con-Agg Inc · MSHA ID 2101353
    Abandoned
  10. Portable Crusher No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakes Paving Inc · MSHA ID 2103076
    Abandoned
  11. Portable Crusher No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakes Paving Inc · MSHA ID 2103208
    Abandoned
  12. Red Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakes Paving Inc · MSHA ID 2103529
    Abandoned
  13. Rock Ridge Resources
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ernest C Anderson Gravel & Ready Mixed Inc · MSHA ID 2103033
    Abandoned
  14. Screener
    Surface metal/non-metal · Feldt Plumbing LLP · MSHA ID 2103605
    Abandoned
  15. Town Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Ernest C Anderson Gravel & Ready Mixed Inc · MSHA ID 2103034
    Abandoned
  16. WILFRED ANDERSEN GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wilfred Andersen Gravel · MSHA ID 2103170
    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 86
Gravel Pit 41
Disturbed Surface - Pit 8
Sand Pit 4
Other counties in MinnesotaAll 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.