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Abandoned mines › Montana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Golden Valley County, Montana

Golden Valley County, Montana has 37 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1979–1986, including 4 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 16 problems in the county, 1 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 14 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Golden Valley 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)
37
Mine openings
4
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
1
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1979–1986 16 OSMRE problems, 15 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
    10 18.9%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    33 62.3%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    3 5.7%
  4. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    7 13.2%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems16 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Cameron Creek P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Cameron Creek P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek Emergency P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek Emergency P2 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Cameron Creek Emergency P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Ci1313 P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Dunlap P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Dunlop P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Dunlop P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Dunlop P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Schaff P3 Mine Opening Reclamation Completed
Schaff 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 Abandoned14 on register
  1. Black Pine Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Asarco Inc · MSHA ID 2401147
    Abandoned
  2. Dana Pit 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vacca Stone · MSHA ID 2402747
    Abandoned
  3. E S Stone & Structure Mobile
    Surface metal/non-metal · E S Stone & Structure · MSHA ID 2402265
    Abandoned
  4. Eagle
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eagle Flagstone · MSHA ID 2402698
    Abandoned
  5. Eagle Mine # One
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eagle Products · MSHA ID 2402409
    Abandoned
  6. Eagle Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eagle Flagstone · MSHA ID 2402720
    Abandoned
  7. Golden Valley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Stoneworks LLC · MSHA ID 2402301
    Abandoned
  8. Kensey
    Surface metal/non-metal · Venture Stone · MSHA ID 2402782
    Abandoned
  9. Lawrence Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · HQ Stone Products, LLC · MSHA ID 2402693
    Abandoned
  10. Marcus Vacca Fort Union
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vacca Stone · MSHA ID 2402610
    Abandoned
  11. Montana Frontier SandStone LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Montana Frontier SandStone LLC · MSHA ID 2402705
    Abandoned
  12. Ramage Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Venture Stone LLC · MSHA ID 2402745
    Abandoned
  13. Rock Ridge Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rod Cranford Inc. · MSHA ID 2402658
    Abandoned
  14. South Barber #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Venture Stone LLC · MSHA ID 2402461
    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 27
Gravel Pit 6
Adit 4
P2 Vertical Openings 3
P3 Spoil Area 3
P2 Subsidence 3
P2 Portals 2
P3 Equipment Facility 2
P3 Mine Opening 1
P2 Surface Burning 1
P1 Portals 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.