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Abandoned mines › Oregon
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Benton County, Oregon

Benton County, Oregon has 136 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1939–1985. 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 Benton 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)
136
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
14
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1939–1985 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
    13 9.6%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    123 90.4%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned14 on register
  1. Ag-Lime Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Morse Brothers Builders Supply · MSHA ID 3502985
    Abandoned
  2. Corvallis Clay Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Corvallis Brick & Tile Works Inc · MSHA ID 3500234
    Abandoned
  3. Kent's River Bottom Top Soil
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kent's River Bottom Top Soil · MSHA ID 3503855
    Abandoned
  4. L & T Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ferguson Logging Company · MSHA ID 3500962
    Abandoned
  5. Mid Valley Gravel Co-Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-Valley Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3503498
    Abandoned
  6. Monroe Clay Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monroe Clay Products Company · MSHA ID 3500240
    Abandoned
  7. MONROE YARD CLAY
    Facility metal/non-metal · Monroe Brick & Tile · MSHA ID 3503427
    Abandoned
  8. Neuman Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Neuman Quarry & Excavating · MSHA ID 3500645
    Abandoned
  9. Old State Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yaquina Head Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 3502845
    Abandoned
  10. Philomath Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · D George Neuman Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 3502745
    Abandoned
  11. Tobe Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hardrock Quarry Inc · MSHA ID 3502929
    Abandoned
  12. Tobe Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · J. R. Hendrix Inc. · MSHA ID 3503806
    Abandoned
  13. Tremaine Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Morse Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 3500477
    Abandoned
  14. WICKS PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mid-Valley Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3502576
    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 39
Quarry 34
Quarry 24
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 13
Gravel Pit 10
Borrow Pit 4
Borrow Pit 4
Clay Pit 3
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Quarry - Rock 1
Other counties in OregonAll 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.