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Abandoned mines › Minnesota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Washington County, Minnesota

Washington County, Minnesota has 124 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1949–1993. MSHA's register carries 30 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Washington 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)
124
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
30
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits10 quadrangle maps, published 1949–1993 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
    11 8.9%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    113 91.1%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned30 on register
  1. #1 CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · J Schuh & Company Inc · MSHA ID 2103113
    Abandoned
  2. 86-222 Portable Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barton Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2102704
    Abandoned
  3. Afton Road Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fisher Construction Company · MSHA ID 2102716
    Abandoned
  4. Alexander Construction Co Inc Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alexander Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2100855
    Abandoned
  5. BRACHT PIT & MILL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bracht Bros Inc · MSHA ID 2101234
    Abandoned
  6. BTG Property Co., LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Crushers, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103868
    Abandoned
  7. Cottage Grove
    Surface metal/non-metal · Solberg Aggregate Company · MSHA ID 2100843
    Abandoned
  8. Craig Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Riteway Construction Company · MSHA ID 2101304
    Abandoned
  9. Freedom 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · HanSon Custom Crushing, Inc. · MSHA ID 2103749
    Abandoned
  10. FREEDOM 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · HANSON CUSTOM CRUSHING, INC. · MSHA ID 2103830
    Abandoned
  11. FREEDOM 5
    Surface metal/non-metal · HanSon Custom Crushing Inc · MSHA ID 2103938
    Abandoned
  12. FREEDOM 6
    Surface metal/non-metal · HanSon Custom Crushing Inc · MSHA ID 2103950
    Abandoned
  13. Freedom 7
    Surface metal/non-metal · HanSon Custom Crushing, Inc · MSHA ID 2104009
    Abandoned
  14. Hudson Pit 713 & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Barton Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2100860
    Abandoned
  15. Larson Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tom Lavalle Excavating & Grading · MSHA ID 2101840
    Abandoned
  16. Lindgren Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · P O Pederson Inc · MSHA ID 2101266
    Abandoned
  17. M6 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2102983
    Abandoned
  18. May #5 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2102831
    Abandoned
  19. Noltiemeyer Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jager Gravel & Construction · MSHA ID 2101265
    Abandoned
  20. Noltiemeyer Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ashbach Construction Company · MSHA ID 2102710
    Abandoned
  21. Pete Miller'S Hwy 94 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2102748
    Abandoned
  22. Power Screen #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rumpca Excavating Inc. · MSHA ID 2103459
    Abandoned
  23. Raleigh Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · M J Raleigh Trucking Inc · MSHA ID 2103039
    Abandoned
  24. Rumpca Excavating Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rumpca Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2102587
    Abandoned
  25. Scandia Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ancon Inc · MSHA ID 2101670
    Abandoned
  26. Scandia Pit #7353
    Surface metal/non-metal · H & S Asphalt Company · MSHA ID 2102826
    Abandoned
  27. Twin City Silica Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Black Diamond Granules Inc · MSHA ID 2101150
    Abandoned
  28. Universal Crushing Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rumpca Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2103494
    Abandoned
  29. Woodbury Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Preferred Sands Of Minnesota · MSHA ID 2103710
    Abandoned
  30. WOODBURY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 2103128
    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 59
Gravel Pit 47
Disturbed Surface - Pit 6
Disturbed Surface 5
Quarry 3
Quarry 3
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.