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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Carlton County, Minnesota

Carlton County, Minnesota has 178 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1953–1993. MSHA's register carries 24 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Carlton 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)
178
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits26 quadrangle maps, published 1953–1993 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
    23 12.9%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    155 87.1%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned24 on register
  1. Airport Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lundin Construction Company Of Cromwell · MSHA ID 2102656
    Abandoned
  2. Atkinson Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lundin Construction Company Of Cromwell · MSHA ID 2102522
    Abandoned
  3. Bush Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Holmes Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2100865
    Abandoned
  4. Bush Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Richard F Schuh Company · MSHA ID 2102746
    Abandoned
  5. Carlton Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Globe Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2102501
    Abandoned
  6. Carter Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shafer Contracting Company · MSHA ID 2102638
    Abandoned
  7. El Jay Screen (1229)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ulland Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2101817
    Abandoned
  8. EL-JAY CONE CRSHR(1207)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ulland Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2101423
    Abandoned
  9. G N Lindsay Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Burlington Northern Inc · MSHA ID 2100478
    Abandoned
  10. Hatchery Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carlton Highway Highway Dept · MSHA ID 2100852
    Abandoned
  11. Heikala Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Waino Heikala Company · MSHA ID 2100669
    Abandoned
  12. Highway 61 Sand and Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buetow Trucking & Excavating · MSHA ID 2103948
    Abandoned
  13. Jergonsen Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W Hodgman & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 2102497
    Abandoned
  14. Kavanaugh Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ulland Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102759
    Abandoned
  15. Koski Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lauri Koski · MSHA ID 2102058
    Abandoned
  16. Lundin Construction Co. of Cromwell Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lundin Construction Company Of Cromwell · MSHA ID 2102767
    Abandoned
  17. Michigan Peat Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Michigan Peat Company · MSHA ID 2100235
    Abandoned
  18. PIONEER CRUSHER (2047)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ulland Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102904
    Abandoned
  19. Scanlon Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ulland Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2100489
    Abandoned
  20. Screen Plant (1224)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ulland Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102635
    Abandoned
  21. Superior Crusher/ Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Decaigny Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2103901
    Abandoned
  22. Thomson Township Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Thomson Township · MSHA ID 2102502
    Abandoned
  23. Thomson Township Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lundin Construction Company Of Cromwell · MSHA ID 2102921
    Abandoned
  24. Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Valley Sand & Gravel Inc. · MSHA ID 2103670
    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 93
Gravel Pit 57
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 10
Disturbed Surface - Pit 7
Disturbed Surface 6
Sand Pit 5
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.