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Abandoned mines › Oregon
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Lake County, Oregon

Lake County, Oregon has 606 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1960–2004, including 12 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 227 prospect pits; 7 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 33 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Lake 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)
606
Mine openings
12
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
33
7 features carry a name227 prospect pits101 quadrangle maps, published 1960–2004 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
    12 2.0%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    227 37.5%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    18 3.0%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    342 56.4%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    7 1.2%
Named features on the maps7 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
American Fossil Mine Open Pit Mine area
Amota Butte Cinder Pit Cinder Pit
Lava Crossing Cinder Pit Cinder Pit
Lucky Lass Mine Open Pit Mine
Lucky Lass Mine Open Pit Mine
South Ice Cave Cinder Pit Cinder Pit
White King Mine Open Pit Mine

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 Abandoned33 on register
  1. Abert Lake Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Asphalt Paving Company · MSHA ID 3502804
    Abandoned
  2. Adel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Roads Inc · MSHA ID 3502992
    Abandoned
  3. Antelope
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ralph Williams Construction Company · MSHA ID 3502821
    Abandoned
  4. Boundry Springs Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Forest Service · MSHA ID 3502077
    Abandoned
  5. Buckeroo Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ralph Williams Construction Company · MSHA ID 3501080
    Abandoned
  6. Christmas Valley Plant & Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oil-Dri Production Co. · MSHA ID 3502416
    Abandoned
  7. Deadman Canyon Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kimdall Construction Co · MSHA ID 3502582
    Abandoned
  8. Doherty Slide Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · R L Coats · MSHA ID 3502543
    Abandoned
  9. Double Eagle #13
    Surface metal/non-metal · Outback Sunstone Mining Company · MSHA ID 3503719
    Abandoned
  10. Dougherty Slide Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stukel Rock & Paving Inc · MSHA ID 3503013
    Abandoned
  11. Drews Creek Portable Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Industrial Constructors Corp · MSHA ID 3503314
    Abandoned
  12. Government Harvey Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Forest Service · MSHA ID 3501077
    Abandoned
  13. Howard Creek Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Western Roads Inc · MSHA ID 3503016
    Abandoned
  14. Jefco Enterprises
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jefco Enterprises LLC · MSHA ID 3503472
    Abandoned
  15. Lake County Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Belle Drilling & Blasting · MSHA ID 3502960
    Abandoned
  16. Last Resort
    Surface metal/non-metal · Titan Iv Mining & Exploration · MSHA ID 3503021
    Abandoned
  17. Leavitt Or Leavitt Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fremont Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3503114
    Abandoned
  18. Messman Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · John L Wilson Inc · MSHA ID 3501994
    Abandoned
  19. Miles Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southern Oregon Rock Company · MSHA ID 3502589
    Abandoned
  20. Mill Flat Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ralph Williams Construction Company · MSHA ID 3502604
    Abandoned
  21. mine#1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Treasure Chest Mining LLC · MSHA ID 3503922
    Abandoned
  22. Misha#2
    Surface metal/non-metal · American Gemstones Mining Co. · MSHA ID 3503812
    Abandoned
  23. Paisley Rock Products Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Continental Crushing & Leasing · MSHA ID 3502927
    Abandoned
  24. Portable 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Island Enterprises · MSHA ID 3503768
    Abandoned
  25. Red Rose #1&2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Red Rose Mining · MSHA ID 3503846
    Abandoned
  26. Scorpion1
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Calvin · MSHA ID 3503802
    Abandoned
  27. SOUTH COUNTY QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lake County Road Department · MSHA ID 3503326
    Abandoned
  28. Starlight Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weee Rock · MSHA ID 3503808
    Abandoned
  29. Strawberry Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rock Process Inc · MSHA ID 3501063
    Abandoned
  30. Suncrystal #8
    Surface metal/non-metal · Apex Exploration and Mining LLC · MSHA ID 3503931
    Abandoned
  31. The Franklin Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brilliant Prospects, LLC · MSHA ID 3503981
    Abandoned
  32. Thomas Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ralph Williams Construction Company · MSHA ID 3503017
    Abandoned
  33. White King Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyles Bros Drilling · MSHA ID 3502699
    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 227
Gravel Pit 115
Borrow Pit 80
Cinder Pit 39
Gravel Pit 32
Cinder Pit 29
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 20
Open Pit Mine 13
Borrow Pit 12
Quarry 7
Mine Shaft 7
Quarry 6
Tailings - Undifferentiated 5
Adit 5
Open Pit Mine 4
Mine Dump 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Mine Dump 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Sand 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.