Abandoned mines in Deer Lodge County, Montana

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   122 17.6%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   497 71.5%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   9 1.3%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   39 5.6%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   22 3.2%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   2 0.3%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   4 0.6%

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. Banker

   Underground metal/non-metal · R&D Exploration & Development LLC · MSHA ID 2402481
   Abandoned 2007-11-17
2. Browns Quarry

   Surface metal/non-metal · Stanco-General J V · MSHA ID 2400004
   Abandoned 1983-07-25
3. Cable Mine

   Surface metal/non-metal · Cable Mountain Mine Inc · MSHA ID 2401704
   Abandoned 1992-04-08
4. CENTENNIAL PIT

   Surface metal/non-metal · Centennial Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 2401913
   Abandoned 2007-07-15
5. Crackerville Sand & Gravel

   Surface metal/non-metal · Golden Technology Inc · MSHA ID 2401932
   Abandoned 1995-09-07
6. Dry Cottonwood Creek

   Surface metal/non-metal · American Gem Corp · MSHA ID 2402053
   Abandoned 1996-09-23
7. DRY COTTONWOOD CREEK

   Surface metal/non-metal · Gem River Corp · MSHA ID 2402063
   Abandoned 2001-08-06
8. Gold Coin

   Underground metal/non-metal · Gold Coin Mining Inc · MSHA ID 2401780
   Abandoned 1990-07-16
9. Mastodon Sand & Gravel Inc

   Surface metal/non-metal · Mastodon Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 2400475
   Abandoned 2009-01-01
10. Silver Lake Gravel Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Silver Securities Inc · MSHA ID 2401938
    Abandoned 1991-08-20
11. Silver Sleepers

    Underground metal/non-metal · R & D Exploration and Development LLC · MSHA ID 2402483
    Abandoned 2007-11-27
12. Slag Crusher

    Facility metal/non-metal · Grey Rock Trucking Company Inc · MSHA ID 2401618
    Abandoned 1981-07-01
13. Snow White

    Surface metal/non-metal · Manufacturers Mineral Company · MSHA ID 2401300
    Abandoned 1982-03-15
14. West Valley Crushing

    Surface metal/non-metal · West Valley Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2401512
    Abandoned 1989-07-11
15. White Cliff Quarry

    Surface metal/non-metal · Laslovich Contracting · MSHA ID 2401303
    Abandoned 1981-03-13

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
• Carbon County 769
• Powell County 741
• Granite County 719
• Cascade County 708
• 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.