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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Douglas County, Minnesota

Douglas County, Minnesota has 133 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1966–1994. MSHA's register carries 27 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Douglas 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)
133
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
27
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1966–1994 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
    4 3.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    129 97.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned27 on register
  1. 2000 HD VSI CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Specialties · MSHA ID 2104031
    Abandoned
  2. 2000 VSI CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Specialties · MSHA ID 2104030
    Abandoned
  3. 3042 JAW W/ CEDARAPIDS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Specialties · MSHA ID 2104029
    Abandoned
  4. 3054 JAW
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Specialties · MSHA ID 2104035
    Abandoned
  5. Berger Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · RBS Excavating LLC · MSHA ID 2103846
    Abandoned
  6. Elmer Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Starry Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2102806
    Abandoned
  7. Ferguson Brothers Excavating Inc Unit 6
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferguson Brothers Excavating Inc. · MSHA ID 2103878
    Abandoned
  8. H-4000 CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Specialties Inc · MSHA ID 2103052
    Abandoned
  9. Larry Then Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Laughlin & Schulz Inc · MSHA ID 2103026
    Abandoned
  10. Northland Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northland Company · MSHA ID 2101838
    Abandoned
  11. Okerlund Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Okerlund Gravel · MSHA ID 2103543
    Abandoned
  12. Okerlund Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Les Okerlund Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2102562
    Abandoned
  13. Paulzine Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wayne Lee Excavating · MSHA ID 2102724
    Abandoned
  14. PEI Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lee's Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2103525
    Abandoned
  15. Penrose
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alexandria Concrete · MSHA ID 2103524
    Abandoned
  16. Penrose Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alexandria Concrete Co · MSHA ID 2103163
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kev's & Son Gravel · MSHA ID 2103549
    Abandoned
  18. PORTABLE CRUSHER #544
    Surface metal/non-metal · Starry Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2102720
    Abandoned
  19. Portable Crusher AC 600
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Specialties Inc · MSHA ID 2103010
    Abandoned
  20. Portable Crusher No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Darren Nelson Excavating · MSHA ID 2103018
    Abandoned
  21. R And R Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · R & R Ready-Mix Inc · MSHA ID 2101836
    Abandoned
  22. Rediehs Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · R & R Ready-Mix Inc · MSHA ID 2100453
    Abandoned
  23. Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakes Area Gravel Product · MSHA ID 2103545
    Abandoned
  24. Smokey's Properties
    Surface metal/non-metal · Seph Construction L.L.C.. · MSHA ID 2103997
    Abandoned
  25. WAYNE LEE AGG. DIV.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wayne Lee Aggregates Division · MSHA ID 2103101
    Abandoned
  26. Wayne Lee Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wayne Lee Excavating · MSHA ID 2102864
    Abandoned
  27. Wayne Lee Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wayne Lee Excavating · MSHA ID 2102541
    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 85
Gravel Pit 38
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 5
Disturbed Surface 3
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 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.