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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Otter Tail County, Minnesota

Otter Tail County, Minnesota has 353 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1951–1994. 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 Otter Tail 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)
353
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits53 quadrangle maps, published 1951–1994 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 1.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    349 98.9%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned20 on register
  1. Arnie's
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gravel Guys LLC · MSHA ID 2103535
    Abandoned
  2. Britt Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Soby Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2101407
    Abandoned
  3. CRUSHER PLANT 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mark Sand & Gravel Acquisition Company · MSHA ID 2100645
    Abandoned
  4. Crushing Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-Central Crushing, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103536
    Abandoned
  5. DON SCHMIDT PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · DON SCHMIDT EXCAVATING · MSHA ID 2103771
    Abandoned
  6. Eckley Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Botner Excavation Services, LLC · MSHA ID 2103395
    Abandoned
  7. Eide Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Egge Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2102437
    Abandoned
  8. Halverson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duininck Brothers & Gilchrist · MSHA ID 2102867
    Abandoned
  9. Hankinson Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lake Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2102949
    Abandoned
  10. Jaw/Roll
    Surface metal/non-metal · North Central INC · MSHA ID 2103795
    Abandoned
  11. OTTERTAIL PORTABLE CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Camas Minndak Inc · MSHA ID 2103109
    Abandoned
  12. Pelican Ready Mix Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pelican Ready Mix · MSHA ID 2102424
    Abandoned
  13. Perham Ready Mix & Aggregate Incorporate
    Surface metal/non-metal · Perham Ready Mix & Aggregate Inc · MSHA ID 2101507
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Crusher No. 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stadum Plumbing & Gravel LLP · MSHA ID 2103022
    Abandoned
  15. Schmidt Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Behrens Custom Crushing · MSHA ID 2103623
    Abandoned
  16. Steib Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mark Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 2102713
    Abandoned
  17. Thunselle Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Soby Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2100613
    Abandoned
  18. WASH PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lampy Ready Mix · MSHA ID 2103108
    Abandoned
  19. Weniger Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Anderson Brothers Construction Company · MSHA ID 2102539
    Abandoned
  20. Weniger Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kenney Tostenson Road Co Inc · MSHA ID 2102545
    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 291
Gravel Pit 46
Sand Pit 9
Disturbed Surface 4
Sand Pit 3
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.