Abandoned mines in Musselshell County, Montana

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   55 29.4%
2. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   16 8.6%
3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   34 18.2%
4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   21 11.2%
5. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   7 3.7%
6. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   54 28.9%

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. Adele Mine No 1

   Surface coal · BMP Investments Inc · MSHA ID 2402363
   Abandoned 2008-02-07
2. Bull Mountain Mine No.1

   Surface coal · Bull Mountain Coal Mining Inc. · MSHA ID 2402471
   Abandoned 2007-03-01
3. Bull Mountain Tain Test Pit

   Surface coal · Consolidation Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400251
   Abandoned 1972-06-06
4. Bull Mountain Test Pit

   Surface coal · Mountain Inc · MSHA ID 2401884
   Abandoned 1997-07-24
5. Bull Mountains Mine No 1

   Underground coal · Meridian Minerals Company · MSHA ID 2401975
   Abandoned 1995-09-01
6. Carpenter Creek Mine

   Surface coal · Carpenter Creek LLC · MSHA ID 2402531
   Abandoned 2025-01-30
7. Cow Creek Mine (Ug)

   Underground coal · Cow Creek Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400120
   Abandoned 1970-10-22
8. Divide Mine (Ug)

   Underground coal · Divide Coal Mining Company · MSHA ID 2400098
   Abandoned 1975-12-08
9. Nies Mine

   Underground coal · Nies Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400100
   Abandoned 1973-04-23
10. P M Coal Mine

    Surface coal · P M Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400923
    Abandoned 1993-05-25
11. P M Ug Mine

    Underground coal · P M Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400101
    Abandoned 1979-10-01
12. Rocky Mountain Recycling & Cushing LLC

    Surface metal/non-metal · Rocky Mountain Recycling & Crushing, LLC · MSHA ID 2402319
    Abandoned 2004-01-07
13. Screening Plant #2

    Surface metal/non-metal · M K Weeden Construction Inc. · MSHA ID 2402330
    Abandoned 2015-08-24
14. Square Deal Mine #1 (Ug)

    Underground coal · Square Deal Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400102
    Abandoned 1973-01-26
15. Square Deal Strip

    Surface coal · Square Deal Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400359
    Abandoned 1973-09-17
16. Storm-King

    Surface coal · Storm King Coal Mining Company Inc · MSHA ID 2400911
    Abandoned 1985-12-17
17. Western (Ug)

    Underground coal · Western Coal Company · MSHA ID 2400103
    Abandoned 1971-10-04

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.