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Abandoned mines › Montana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Custer County, Montana

Custer County, Montana has 63 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1965–1984, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 2 prospect pits. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 61 problems in the county, 9 of them not yet 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 Custer 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)
63
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
9
MSHA mines marked abandoned
6
0 features carry a name2 prospect pits29 quadrangle maps, published 1965–1984 61 OSMRE problems, 52 reclaimed 1 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
    17 13.7%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    2 1.6%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    60 48.4%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    4 3.2%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    3 2.4%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    38 30.6%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems61 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Coal Creek P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Coal Creek P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Coal Creek P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Coal Creek P3 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Coal Creek P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Completed
Crow Rock P1 Portals In Reclamation
Crow Rock P1 Subsidence In Reclamation
Crow Rock P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Crow Rock P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Crow Rock P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Crow Rock P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Crow Rock P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Custer Additions P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Custer County No. 2 Mine P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Extra Mine P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
G A Krause P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Hay Creek P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Hay Creek P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Hay Creek P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Hay Creek P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Hay Creek 30 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Hay Creek 30 P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Johnson Creek #1 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Johnson Creek #2 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Johnson Creek #3 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Johnson Creek #4 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Johnson Creek #5 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Johnson Creek #6 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence In Reclamation
Johnson Creek #7 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Johnson Creek #8 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
McNamee P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Miles City Scoria Pit P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Miles City Scoria Pit P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Muster Creek P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Muster Creek P2 Underground Mine Fires Reclamation Completed
Muster Creek P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Muster Creek P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Muster Creek P3 Slump Reclamation Completed
Okerman Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Stair Maintenances P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Storm King P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Storm King P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Storm King P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Sunday Creek Mine P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Sunday Creek Mine P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Sunday Creek Mine P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Tonn #1 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Tonn #2 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Tonn #3 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Tonn #4 Coal Fire P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Waldie Coal Fire P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Waldie Subsidence P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Winkle P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Winkle P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Winkle P2 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Winkle P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Winkle P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Winkle (109) P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Winkle (801) P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Winkle (801) P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Winkle (801) P2 Vertical Openings 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. Crusher 2401
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gus M Albert Contractor · MSHA ID 2401434
    Abandoned
  2. Eckart Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eckart Construction · MSHA ID 2401723
    Abandoned
  3. Eho Pugmill #3203
    Surface metal/non-metal · E H Oftedal & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 2402075
    Abandoned
  4. Hathaway Mine
    Surface coal · Hathaway Coal Company · MSHA ID 2401511
    Abandoned and Sealed
  5. MUGGLI PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Muggli Construction Llc · MSHA ID 2402118
    Abandoned
  6. RONNING PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Scanlan Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2402105
    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 35
P2 Subsidence 25
Gravel Pit 21
P2 Portals 7
P2 Vertical Openings 7
P1 Subsidence 4
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 4
P3 Spoil Area 3
P3 Equipment Facility 3
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 3
Prospect Pit 2
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 1
P3 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
Adit 1
P3 Slump 1
P3 Mine Opening 1
P2 Surface Burning 1
P1 Portals 1
P2 Underground Mine Fires 1
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 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.