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Abandoned mines › North Dakota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in McLean County, North Dakota

McLean County, North Dakota has 192 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1922–1981; 4 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 18 problems in the county, 13 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 11 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering McLean 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)
192
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
13
MSHA mines marked abandoned
11
4 features carry a name0 prospect pits42 quadrangle maps, published 1922–1981 18 OSMRE problems, 5 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 1.0%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    38 18.1%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    154 73.3%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    4 1.9%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    12 5.7%
Named features on the maps4 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Black Diamond Mine Open Pit Mine
Custer Mine State Wildlife Management Area Strip Mine area
Kugler Mine Open Pit Mine area
Wilton Mine Strip Mine area

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 problems18 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Black Diamond P1 Surface Burning Reclamation Completed
Black Diamond P2 Subsidence In Reclamation
Coal Lake A,b P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Coal Lake A,b P2 Subsidence In Reclamation
Coal Lake A,b P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Custer P2 Dangerous Highwalls In Reclamation
Custer P2 Subsidence In Reclamation
Custer P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Duchene P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Duchene P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Garrison P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Garrison P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Garrison P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Garrison P2 Subsidence In Reclamation
Garrison P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Garrison P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation
Hultberg P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Roseglen South P2 Subsidence 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 Abandoned11 on register
  1. Carlson Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · CAD NW, Inc. · MSHA ID 3200997
    Abandoned
  2. CRUSHER #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · A & G Construction · MSHA ID 3200696
    Abandoned
  3. Hummel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Badinger Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3200588
    Abandoned
  4. Lindteigen Construction Company Incorpor
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lindteigen Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3200122
    Abandoned
  5. Missouri Rivers Underwood Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Missouri River Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3200504
    Abandoned
  6. Olson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Schriock Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3200332
    Abandoned
  7. Pit 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Johnny's Ready Mix LLC · MSHA ID 3201037
    Abandoned
  8. Riverdale Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dakota Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3200144
    Abandoned
  9. Underwood Strip
    Surface coal · Underwood Coal Company Inc · MSHA ID 3200027
    Abandoned
  10. Whites Underwood Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · White Property Inc · MSHA ID 3200209
    Abandoned
  11. Wilton Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Earth Builders Inc · MSHA ID 3200505
    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 110
Gravel Pit 25
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 18
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 17
Open Pit Mine 6
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 5
P2 Subsidence 5
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
P3 Spoil Area 4
Strip Mine 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Strip Mine 3
Disturbed Surface 2
P1 Vertical Openings 1
P1 Subsidence 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P1 Surface Burning 1
Sand Pit 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.