Abandoned mines in Mineral County, Montana

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   90 38.1%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   55 23.3%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   37 15.7%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   24 10.2%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   12 5.1%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   4 1.7%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   14 5.9%

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. Cochran Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Washington Construction Company · MSHA ID 2401393
   Abandoned 1983-09-28
2. CRUSHER 300

   Surface metal/non-metal · Green Mountain Construction · MSHA ID 2402183
   Abandoned 2001-05-16
3. Gold Bug

   Underground metal/non-metal · Flathead Mines Inc · MSHA ID 2401649
   Abandoned 1982-05-05
4. Green Mountain Const Gravel Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Green Mountain Construction · MSHA ID 2402049
   Abandoned 2022-01-01
5. Gull Lumber Co (Screening Plant)

   Surface metal/non-metal · Donald Gull Lumber Co (Screening Plant) · MSHA ID 2402215
   Abandoned 2019-10-29
6. MINERAL COUNTY PORTABLE SCREEN

   Surface metal/non-metal · Mineral County Road Dept · MSHA ID 2402178
   Abandoned 2003-09-11
7. Montana Barite Pit Superior

   Surface metal/non-metal · Montana Barite Company Inc · MSHA ID 2401219
   Abandoned 1978-04-24
8. Mullan Barite Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · St Regis Barite Company · MSHA ID 2401305
   Abandoned 1983-07-22
9. Nancy Lee Mill

   Facility metal/non-metal · Intermountain Mineral Engineers Inc · MSHA ID 2400928
   Abandoned 1983-05-17
10. Quartz Creek Gold Inc

    Surface metal/non-metal · Quartz Creek Gold Inc · MSHA ID 2402727
    Abandoned 2019-07-29
11. Quartz Placer

    Surface metal/non-metal · Hagaman Inc · MSHA ID 2402509
    Abandoned 2009-01-01
12. Rock Farm

    Surface metal/non-metal · Ken Miller Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2402448
    Abandoned 2006-08-02
13. St. Clair Ranch Rock Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · St. Clair Ranch Rock Pit · MSHA ID 2402365
    Abandoned 2009-06-13
14. Superior Rock Sand & Gravel

    Surface metal/non-metal · Superior Rock Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 2402320
    Abandoned 2008-08-18
15. Trout Creek Placer

    Surface metal/non-metal · Trout Creek Mining Co · MSHA ID 2401225
    Abandoned 1978-10-17
16. Western Reclamation, LLC #2

    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Reclamation, LLC · MSHA ID 2402405
    Abandoned 2008-08-08

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
• Deer Lodge County 688
• Fergus County 550

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.