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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Benton County, Minnesota

Benton County, Minnesota has 73 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1948–1978. MSHA's register carries 30 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Benton 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)
73
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
30
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1948–1978 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
    1 1.4%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    72 98.6%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned30 on register
  1. 43485
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103485
    Abandoned
  2. 43487
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2102427
    Abandoned
  3. 43490
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103140
    Abandoned
  4. 43491
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2100462
    Abandoned
  5. 43495
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103106
    Abandoned
  6. 43498
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103280
    Abandoned
  7. 44387
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Bros., Inc. · MSHA ID 2103330
    Abandoned
  8. 44482
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103402
    Abandoned
  9. 44483
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2101619
    Abandoned
  10. 44990
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103356
    Abandoned
  11. 45400
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Bros Inc · MSHA ID 2100503
    Abandoned
  12. 45415
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103253
    Abandoned
  13. 45417
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103134
    Abandoned
  14. 45900/45951
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103093
    Abandoned
  15. 45930
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Bros., Inc. · MSHA ID 2103136
    Abandoned
  16. 45930
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103588
    Abandoned
  17. 45960
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103092
    Abandoned
  18. 45992
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103347
    Abandoned
  19. 560215
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 2103784
    Abandoned
  20. Busse Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102676
    Abandoned
  21. El-Jay
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2103062
    Abandoned
  22. Evoquip 230R
    Surface metal/non-metal · Larsen Dirtworks LLC · MSHA ID 2103960
    Abandoned
  23. Evoquip Impact Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Saldana Excavating · MSHA ID 2104100
    Abandoned
  24. Herbst Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102506
    Abandoned
  25. Jaw Plant and Cone Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Helmin Construction · MSHA ID 2103508
    Abandoned
  26. Killinger Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102426
    Abandoned
  27. Pioneer 2500 Impactor
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hardrives Inc. · MSHA ID 2103695
    Abandoned
  28. Scenic Drive Pit 3290
    Surface metal/non-metal · Landwehr Construction · MSHA ID 2103848
    Abandoned
  29. Thompson Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ray thompson and Company Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2104089
    Abandoned
  30. Wash Plant and Screws
    Surface metal/non-metal · Helmin Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103930
    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 48
Gravel Pit 19
Quarry 4
Quarry 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
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.