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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Le Sueur County, Minnesota

Le Sueur County, Minnesota has 84 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1991. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Le Sueur 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)
84
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits14 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1991 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    84 100.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned20 on register
  1. 01976 W
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southern Minnesota Construction · MSHA ID 2103742
    Abandoned
  2. 636 R
    Surface metal/non-metal · Max Johnson Construction · MSHA ID 2103025
    Abandoned
  3. Boreke Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carlson Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102425
    Abandoned
  4. Brown Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ed Swartout Inc · MSHA ID 2101824
    Abandoned
  5. Caroline & Moses Qy
    Surface metal/non-metal · Babcock Stone Company · MSHA ID 2100769
    Abandoned
  6. Cone Crushing
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wacker Brothers Construction & Son · MSHA ID 2103002
    Abandoned
  7. Henroy Komatz Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Komatz Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2101562
    Abandoned
  8. Johnson Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Johnson Aggregates Incorporated · MSHA ID 2103090
    Abandoned
  9. Kasota Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Covia Holdings Corporation · MSHA ID 2102836
    Abandoned
  10. KASOTA PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Pipe & Products Minnesota Inc · MSHA ID 2101406
    Abandoned
  11. Mollenaheur Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duininck Brothers & Gilchrist · MSHA ID 2102696
    Abandoned
  12. Pettis Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · River Bend Asphalt Company · MSHA ID 2102952
    Abandoned
  13. Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Johnson Aggregates Inc. · MSHA ID 2103825
    Abandoned
  14. PSG Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southern Minnesota Construction · MSHA ID 2103343
    Abandoned
  15. State Pit No 3118-A
    Surface metal/non-metal · Minnesota State Dept Of Transportat · MSHA ID 2102604
    Abandoned
  16. Swartout Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ed Swartout Inc · MSHA ID 2100728
    Abandoned
  17. Swenson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ed Swartout Inc · MSHA ID 2102682
    Abandoned
  18. TH169 Kasota Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Landwehr Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103865
    Abandoned
  19. Vetter Stone Co North Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vetter Stone Company · MSHA ID 2100772
    Abandoned
  20. Vetters North Quarry Waste Pile
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lundin Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100770
    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 40
Gravel Pit 32
Quarry 6
Quarry 4
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Sand Pit 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.