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Abandoned mines › Montana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Meagher County, Montana

Meagher County, Montana has 440 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1951–2000, including 35 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 364 prospect pits; 15 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 15 problems in the county, 6 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 15 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Meagher 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)
440
Mine openings
35
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
6
MSHA mines marked abandoned
15
15 features carry a name364 prospect pits30 quadrangle maps, published 1951–2000 15 OSMRE problems, 9 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
    39 8.6%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    364 80.0%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    11 2.4%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    29 6.4%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    4 0.9%
  6. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    3 0.7%
  7. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    5 1.1%
Named features on the maps15 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Belle of the Castle Mine Adit
Bigler Mine Adit
Clara Burton Mine Mine Shaft
Copper Mine Mine Shaft
Copper State Mine Open Pit Mine
Cumberland Mines Mine Shaft
Hamilton Mine Adit
Iron Chief Mine Mine Shaft
Judge Mine Mine Shaft
Jumbo Mine Mine Shaft
Lucky Dollar Mine Mine Shaft
New Deal Mine Mine Shaft
Porcupine Mine Prospect Pit
Snowbank Mine Adit
Yellowstone Mine Mine Shaft

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 problems15 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Belle Of The Castle P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Belle Of The Castle P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Belle Of The Castle P2 Portals Reclamation Pending
Cumberland P2 Clogged Stream Lands Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Clogged Streams Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Industrial/Residential Waste Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Cumberland P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Sw Ne S10 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Sw Ne S10 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Sw Ne S10 P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending

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 Abandoned15 on register
  1. Bigler Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Bigler Mining Co LLC · MSHA ID 2402071
    Abandoned
  2. Black Butte Copper
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tintina Montana Inc. · MSHA ID 2402737
    Abandoned
  3. BLACK BUTTE IRON MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hallett Minerals Company · MSHA ID 2401476
    Abandoned
  4. Camp Robber
    Surface metal/non-metal · E L Burns · MSHA ID 2400350
    Abandoned
  5. Elk Creek Operation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Heartland Placer Gold Ltd Partnership · MSHA ID 2401687
    Abandoned
  6. Five Gallon Bucket
    Surface metal/non-metal · Big Sky Mining & Development · MSHA ID 2401744
    Abandoned
  7. Hughesville Joint Venture
    Underground metal/non-metal · Hecla Mining Company · MSHA ID 2401726
    Abandoned
  8. Last Hope Placer
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Pollick · MSHA ID 2401690
    Abandoned
  9. Mc Connell Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Connell Mine · MSHA ID 2401748
    Abandoned
  10. Mikesell Mobile Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mikesell Sales & Service Inc · MSHA ID 2401475
    Abandoned
  11. Rader Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rader Mines · MSHA ID 2401743
    Abandoned
  12. Snowbank Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Richard K Geordge · MSHA ID 2401693
    Abandoned
  13. Tom Mc Millin
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tom Mc Millin Company · MSHA ID 2401772
    Abandoned
  14. Tom Mc Millin Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Millin Brothers Constructors · MSHA ID 2401698
    Abandoned
  15. William Manger
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ono Inc · MSHA ID 2401684
    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
Prospect Pit 364
Mine Shaft 21
Gravel Pit 19
Adit 14
Open Pit Mine 7
Gravel Pit 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 3
Quarry 3
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 3
P2 Portals 2
P2 Vertical Openings 2
P2 Subsidence 1
Quarry 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
P2 Clogged Stream Lands 1
P2 Clogged Streams 1
P2 Industrial/Residential Waste 1
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 1
Tailings - Dredge 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.