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Abandoned mines › Montana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Dawson County, Montana

Dawson County, Montana has 55 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1966–1983, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 3 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 33 problems in the county, 1 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 11 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Dawson 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)
55
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
1
MSHA mines marked abandoned
11
3 features carry a name0 prospect pits19 quadrangle maps, published 1966–1983 33 OSMRE problems, 32 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
    14 15.9%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    6 6.8%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    48 54.5%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    6 6.8%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 1.1%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    13 14.8%
Named features on the maps3 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Burning Coal Mine Coal Mine
Burning Coal Mine Coal Mine
Gampst Mine Open Pit Mine

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 problems33 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Chimney Rock P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Chimney Rock P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Chimney Rock P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Frank Fire P1 Underground Mine Fires Reclamation Completed
Gossen P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Gossen P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Gossen P3 Water Problems Reclamation Completed
Hatfield Fire P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Johnson Hill P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Johnson Hill P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Klempel Fire P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Klempel Fire P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Medike P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Medike P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Medike P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Medike P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Mullendore P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Mullendore P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Nelson P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Nelson P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Peuse P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Schwartz P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Schwartz P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Schwartz P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Schwartz P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Schwartz P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Schwartz P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Starr P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Three Mile Creek P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Three Mile Creek P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Three Mile Creek P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Three Mile Creek P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Three Mile Creek P3 Spoil Area 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 Abandoned11 on register
  1. Circle Highway Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · J & J Inc · MSHA ID 2401151
    Abandoned
  2. Crisaffuli Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duininck Brothers & Gilchrist · MSHA ID 2401551
    Abandoned
  3. Dawson County Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dawson County Highway Department · MSHA ID 2401480
    Abandoned
  4. Dawson-Crisafulli Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Badinger Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2400869
    Abandoned
  5. Ed'S Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Badinger Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2401539
    Abandoned
  6. Knolls Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knolls Ready Mix · MSHA ID 2400469
    Abandoned
  7. Langstaff Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gene Wood Ready-Mix Inc · MSHA ID 2400464
    Abandoned
  8. Paul'S Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Badinger Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2401410
    Abandoned
  9. Pugmill- New C6
    Surface metal/non-metal · Prince Inc · MSHA ID 2402370
    Abandoned
  10. Ree Scoria Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Excel Industries Inc · MSHA ID 2402664
    Abandoned
  11. Timber Creek
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peak Aggregate Products · MSHA ID 2402672
    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 33
Gravel Pit 11
P2 Portals 8
P2 Subsidence 7
P3 Spoil Area 6
P2 Vertical Openings 4
Open Pit Mine 2
P1 Subsidence 2
Coal Mine 2
Strip Mine 1
Borrow Pit 1
P1 Surface Burning 1
Open Pit Mine 1
P1 Portals 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Quarry 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
Borrow Pit 1
P1 Underground Mine Fires 1
P3 Water Problems 1
Adit 1
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 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.