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Abandoned mines › Oregon
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Jefferson County, Oregon

Jefferson County, Oregon has 262 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1959–1992, including 16 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 100 prospect pits; 7 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 17 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Jefferson 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)
262
Mine openings
16
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
7 features carry a name100 prospect pits36 quadrangle maps, published 1959–1992 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
    16 6.1%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    100 38.2%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    7 2.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    138 52.7%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 0.4%
Named features on the maps7 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Axehandle Mine Mine Shaft
Horse Heaven Mine Open Pit Mine
Oregon King Mine Adit
Priday Agate Beds Open Pit Mine
Priday Agate Beds Open Pit Mine
Queen Oregon Mines Adit
Ruby Mine Adit

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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned17 on register
  1. Baggett
    Surface metal/non-metal · Consolidated Crushing LLC · MSHA ID 3503589
    Abandoned
  2. CTWS CRUSHING CO
    Surface metal/non-metal · Confederated Tribes Of Warm Spngs Reserv Of Or · MSHA ID 3503373
    Abandoned
  3. D-Ray Crushing
    Surface metal/non-metal · D-Ray Crushing · MSHA ID 3503798
    Abandoned
  4. Grody Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hiland Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3503079
    Abandoned
  5. Haystack Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jefferson County Road Department · MSHA ID 3502903
    Abandoned
  6. Madras Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Deschutes Ready Mix · MSHA ID 3502600
    Abandoned
  7. Metolius Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rickabaugh Construction · MSHA ID 3503985
    Abandoned
  8. Metolius Rock Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Downing Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3503413
    Abandoned
  9. Mine #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · J. E. McAmis, Inc. · MSHA ID 3503898
    Abandoned
  10. Mobile Crusher Setup 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · K3 Construction LLC · MSHA ID 3503959
    Abandoned
  11. Old Maids Canyon Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jefferson County Road Department · MSHA ID 3502767
    Abandoned
  12. old maids canyon quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · central oregon basalt products llc · MSHA ID 3503836
    Abandoned
  13. Plant # 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rock N Road · MSHA ID 3503715
    Abandoned
  14. Portable # 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Deschutes Valley Water District · MSHA ID 3503704
    Abandoned
  15. Stevenson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jefferson County Road Department · MSHA ID 3502757
    Abandoned
  16. Warm Springs Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Prunoe Logging & Construction · MSHA ID 3503009
    Abandoned
  17. Zimpki Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chiddix Construction Company · MSHA ID 3502988
    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
Prospect Pit 100
Borrow Pit 36
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 33
Quarry 26
Gravel Pit 17
Adit 12
Cinder Pit 7
Open Pit Mine 7
Quarry 6
Sand Pit 5
Mine Shaft 4
Gravel Pit 4
Cinder Pit 3
Tailings - Undifferentiated 1
Borrow Pit 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.