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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Houston County, Minnesota

Houston County, Minnesota has 71 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1956–1991. MSHA's register carries 34 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Houston 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)
71
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
34
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits12 quadrangle maps, published 1956–1991 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 5.6%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    67 94.4%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned34 on register
  1. BIRKLAND
    Surface metal/non-metal · BOTCHER CONST. CO., INC. · MSHA ID 2103315
    Abandoned
  2. Brownsville Site
    Surface metal/non-metal · Denstad Construction LLC · MSHA ID 2103698
    Abandoned
  3. Conniff Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Construction Company · MSHA ID 2102633
    Abandoned
  4. Doblar Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100121
    Abandoned
  5. Gap Hill Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Botcher Construction Company · MSHA ID 2101720
    Abandoned
  6. Gillan Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100181
    Abandoned
  7. Graf Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Construction Company · MSHA ID 2100712
    Abandoned
  8. Guberud Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100036
    Abandoned
  9. Hector Houston County Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100037
    Abandoned
  10. Heinz Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Comstock Trucking · MSHA ID 2102666
    Abandoned
  11. Holty-Badger Quarry And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2101649
    Abandoned
  12. Horn Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2101748
    Abandoned
  13. Houston County Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Quarve & Anderson Company · MSHA ID 2100092
    Abandoned
  14. Houston County Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Patterson Quarries-Div/Mathy Construction Co · MSHA ID 2102820
    Abandoned
  15. Kelly Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Botcher Construction Company · MSHA ID 2100008
    Abandoned
  16. Lonning Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Croell,Inc. · MSHA ID 2103058
    Abandoned
  17. Muhly Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roverud Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2102469
    Abandoned
  18. Oak Ridge Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roverud Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2101391
    Abandoned
  19. Ostreng Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ostreng Construction Company · MSHA ID 2100185
    Abandoned
  20. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Rock & Ready Mix · MSHA ID 2102694
    Abandoned
  21. Portable Crusher #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Rock Products · MSHA ID 2103043
    Abandoned
  22. Portable Crusher #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Rock & Ready Mix · MSHA ID 2103440
    Abandoned
  23. Portable No. 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Orval Sorum & Sons · MSHA ID 2103463
    Abandoned
  24. Portable Rip Rap Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roverud Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2101395
    Abandoned
  25. Portable Screening Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Rock Products · MSHA ID 2103044
    Abandoned
  26. Richards Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Comstock Trk, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103328
    Abandoned
  27. Thiele Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roverud Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2101394
    Abandoned
  28. Tippery Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2102608
    Abandoned
  29. Two By Four Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100040
    Abandoned
  30. Vehrenkamp Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100042
    Abandoned
  31. Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kruckow Rock & Ready Mix · MSHA ID 2103441
    Abandoned
  32. Winnebago Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100043
    Abandoned
  33. Yucatan Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2101650
    Abandoned
  34. Zaiger Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hector Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100039
    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
Quarry 55
Sand Pit 7
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
Quarry 2
Gravel Pit 2
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.