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Abandoned mines › North Dakota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Burleigh County, North Dakota

Burleigh County, North Dakota has 153 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1980, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 9 problems in the county, 3 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 24 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Burleigh 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)
153
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
3
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits34 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1980 9 OSMRE problems, 6 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
    2 1.2%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    16 9.9%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    136 84.0%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.6%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    7 4.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems9 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Anton Krush P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Frank Murry P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Johnson, Archie P2 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Wilton P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Wilton P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Wilton P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Wilton P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Wilton P2 Subsidence In Reclamation
Wilton P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation

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 Abandoned24 on register
  1. Crusher #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River North Central · MSHA ID 3200774
    Abandoned
  2. Crusher #3 (portable)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Corporation-North Central · MSHA ID 3200778
    Abandoned
  3. Dakota Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dakota Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3200145
    Abandoned
  4. Engdahl Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mariner Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3200983
    Abandoned
  5. FALCONER PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200323
    Abandoned
  6. Hansen Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200726
    Abandoned
  7. Klein Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Missouri River Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3200648
    Abandoned
  8. KOLBERG PLANT 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · MID-WEST AGGREGATES · MSHA ID 3200420
    Abandoned
  9. Mc Cormick Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200699
    Abandoned
  10. Mc Donald South Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200419
    Abandoned
  11. Onyx Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Zircon Construction · MSHA ID 3200702
    Abandoned
  12. Plant 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Material Resources, Inc. · MSHA ID 3200861
    Abandoned
  13. Plant 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Material Resources, Inc. · MSHA ID 3200893
    Abandoned
  14. Plant 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Material Resources, Inc. · MSHA ID 3200891
    Abandoned
  15. PORTABLE CRUSHER PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roadmakers Inc · MSHA ID 3200746
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Crushing Plant #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Strata Corp · MSHA ID 3200734
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Corporation - NC Division · MSHA ID 3200966
    Abandoned
  18. Portable Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gail Wachter Investments · MSHA ID 3200741
    Abandoned
  19. Ryberg Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200565
    Abandoned
  20. Sunny Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Excavating Company · MSHA ID 3200608
    Abandoned
  21. Ward Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gravel Supply Inc · MSHA ID 3200136
    Abandoned
  22. Wash Plant #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knife River Corporation-North Central · MSHA ID 3200967
    Abandoned
  23. Wetzel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200609
    Abandoned
  24. Wilton Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gravel Supply Inc · MSHA ID 3200660
    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 113
Gravel Pit 17
Disturbed Surface - Pit 11
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 4
P1 Subsidence 3
P2 Subsidence 3
Open Pit Mine 2
Scoria Pit 2
Open Pit Mine 2
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P2 Portals 1
Strip Mine 1
Mine Shaft 1
Other counties in North DakotaAll 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.