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Abandoned mines › Montana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Chouteau County, Montana

Chouteau County, Montana has 91 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1995, including 13 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 4 prospect pits; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 14 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 6 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Chouteau 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)
91
Mine openings
13
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
6
2 features carry a name4 prospect pits38 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1995 14 OSMRE problems, 14 reclaimed 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mine openings
    shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
    19 18.1%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    4 3.8%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 3.8%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    70 66.7%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 1.9%
  6. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    2 1.9%
  7. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    4 3.8%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Sexton Coal Mines Adit
Waidman Coal Mine Adit

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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems14 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Blue Pony Mine P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Blue Pony Mine P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Blue Pony Mine P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Ci0538 P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Frame P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Frame P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Frame P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Mack-nygard P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed

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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned6 on register
  1. AYERS ROCK
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ayers Ltd Inc · MSHA ID 2402188
    Abandoned
  2. Chouteau County Rd Dist #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chouteau County Rd Dist #2 · MSHA ID 2402057
    Abandoned
  3. FAB TEC SCREEN
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chouteau County · MSHA ID 2402056
    Abandoned
  4. Naeseth'S Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Naeseth'S Redi-Mix Company · MSHA ID 2402035
    Abandoned
  5. Naeseth's Sand & Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Naeseth's Ready Mix Company · MSHA ID 2400495
    Abandoned
  6. QUNELL #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chouteau County · MSHA ID 2402058
    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 51
Gravel Pit 19
Adit 12
Prospect Pit 4
P2 Portals 3
Open Pit Mine 3
P2 Vertical Openings 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
P2 Subsidence 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
Air Shaft 1
P1 Subsidence 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P3 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P3 Gobs 1
Other counties in MontanaAll 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.