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Abandoned mines › North Dakota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Grand Forks County, North Dakota

Grand Forks County, North Dakota has 179 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1934–1979. 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 Grand Forks 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)
179
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits23 quadrangle maps, published 1934–1979 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    3 1.7%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    176 98.3%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned14 on register
  1. East Roader Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Davidson & Gabrial Contractors · MSHA ID 3200388
    Abandoned
  2. Gensrich Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harley J Camperud Gravel Supply · MSHA ID 3200385
    Abandoned
  3. Hogan Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northern Improvement Company · MSHA ID 3200484
    Abandoned
  4. Midstokke
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gravel Producers Ltd · MSHA ID 3200701
    Abandoned
  5. Nesdahl Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Aggregate Producers Ltd · MSHA ID 3200681
    Abandoned
  6. Portable Screen Plant II
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schmitz Inc · MSHA ID 3200863
    Abandoned
  7. Portable Screening Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Benson Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3200680
    Abandoned
  8. Reynolds Pit #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rosholt Construction · MSHA ID 3200671
    Abandoned
  9. Syverson Site
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hawkes Company Inc · MSHA ID 3200718
    Abandoned
  10. Thompson Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rosholt Construction · MSHA ID 3200672
    Abandoned
  11. Thompson Pit #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rosholt Construction · MSHA ID 3200673
    Abandoned
  12. Valley Contracting Yard
    Surface metal/non-metal · Valley Contracting · MSHA ID 3200389
    Abandoned
  13. Walter Holweber Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Davidson Gravel · MSHA ID 3200567
    Abandoned
  14. Walter Rakoczy Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Corral Lebacken · MSHA ID 3200487
    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 98
Gravel Pit 77
Disturbed Surface - Pit 2
Sand Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 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.