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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Mille Lacs County, Minnesota

Mille Lacs County, Minnesota has 100 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1968–1982. MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Mille Lacs 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)
100
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits15 quadrangle maps, published 1968–1982 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
    2 2.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    98 98.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned18 on register
  1. 45415
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2103094
    Abandoned
  2. CR - III
    Surface metal/non-metal · Buckley Construction II · MSHA ID 2103049
    Abandoned
  3. Elg Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Marvin S Elg · MSHA ID 2102873
    Abandoned
  4. Elliason Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harlan Roth Construction Company · MSHA ID 2101627
    Abandoned
  5. James Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102739
    Abandoned
  6. Manea Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Certified Aggregate Products · MSHA ID 2103559
    Abandoned
  7. Mcminn Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hatch Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2102679
    Abandoned
  8. Mille Lacs Agg & Concrete Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mille Lacs Aggregate & Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 2100724
    Abandoned
  9. Pierson Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Minnesota Valley Improvement Company · MSHA ID 2101713
    Abandoned
  10. Plant 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lakes Aggregate Custom Crushing Inc. · MSHA ID 2104036
    Abandoned
  11. Princeton Aggregate Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Princeton Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 2102680
    Abandoned
  12. Sanford Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sakry Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2101482
    Abandoned
  13. Sanford Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bauerly Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 2102556
    Abandoned
  14. Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · J B I Sand & Gravel LLC · MSHA ID 2103435
    Abandoned
  15. Screen Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Havel Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103464
    Abandoned
  16. Stafford Aggregate LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stafford Aggregate LLC · MSHA ID 2103596
    Abandoned
  17. Vivant Construction
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vivant Construction · MSHA ID 2103547
    Abandoned
  18. Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Simonson Ent. Inc. · MSHA ID 2103582
    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 86
Gravel Pit 11
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
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.