Abandoned mines in Carbon County, Montana

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   95 10.8%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   630 71.3%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   14 1.6%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   50 5.7%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   49 5.5%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   10 1.1%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   35 4.0%

A name is the label printed beside the symbol on the map. "First mapped" is the earliest topographic edition that shows the symbol, which bounds the feature's age from above; it is not the date it was worked. Unnamed features (most prospect pits, adits and shafts carry no label) are in the counts above but not this list.

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

1. ABC Gravel Inc

   Surface metal/non-metal · ABC Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2402250
   Abandoned 2013-08-26
2. Camyon Ferry Mine

   Surface metal/non-metal · Canyon Ferry Mining Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 2402020
   Abandoned 1994-07-06
3. Carbon County Portable Crusher

   Surface metal/non-metal · Carbon County · MSHA ID 2401491
   Abandoned 1982-08-18
4. Crusher #1

   Surface metal/non-metal · Sticka Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2401864
   Abandoned 1991-08-19
5. District #2 Crusher

   Surface metal/non-metal · Carbon County Road & Maintenance · MSHA ID 2401861
   Abandoned 1988-04-11
6. Edgar Quarry

   Surface metal/non-metal · Big Sky Boulder Supply, Inc · MSHA ID 2402707
   Abandoned 2026-04-13
7. HUDAK PIT

   Surface metal/non-metal · Hudak Excavation Inc · MSHA ID 2402068
   Abandoned 2003-08-22
8. Keeland #1

   Surface metal/non-metal · Keeland & Son Gravel Supply · MSHA ID 2401944
   Abandoned 1992-11-10
9. Montana Limestone Company

   Facility metal/non-metal · Montana Limestone Company · MSHA ID 2401860
   Abandoned 1992-01-07
10. MONTANA LIMESTONE COMPANY

    Surface metal/non-metal · Montana Limestone Company · MSHA ID 2400006
    Abandoned 2003-02-05
11. New Bridger Mine

    Underground coal · New Bridger Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400175
    Abandoned 1986-02-20
12. Red Lodge Smith Site

    Facility coal · Cook Coal Company · MSHA ID 2401839
    Abandoned 1987-04-04
13. Roadside Mine Ug

    Underground coal · Roadside Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400092
    Abandoned 1971-02-12
14. Rusty Bucket Inc

    Surface metal/non-metal · Rusty Bucket Inc · MSHA ID 2402384
    Abandoned 2005-04-01
15. S&T WASH PLANT

    Surface metal/non-metal · S & T Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 2402245
    Abandoned 2011-01-01
16. Union Reserve Coal Company Inc

    Underground coal · Union Reserve Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 2401362
    Abandoned and Sealed 1986-03-27
17. Warren Quarry

    Surface metal/non-metal · Montana Limestone Company · MSHA ID 2402304
    Abandoned 2002-09-25

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Madison County 3,766
• Silver Bow County 2,397
• Jefferson County 1,973
• Lewis and Clark County 1,862
• Broadwater County 1,418
• Beaverhead County 1,378
• Powell County 741
• Granite County 719
• Cascade County 708
• Deer Lodge County 688
• Fergus County 550
• Meagher County 440

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.