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Abandoned mines › Oregon
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Lincoln County, Oregon

Lincoln County, Oregon has 131 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1939–1985, including 1 prospect pits; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 24 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Lincoln 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)
131
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
2 features carry a name1 prospect pits32 quadrangle maps, published 1939–1985 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    1 0.8%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    7 5.3%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    123 93.9%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Eckman Quarry Quarry area
Gravel Stock Pile Gravel Pit

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 Abandoned24 on register
  1. Couger Mountain Pit 7 10 27 Trs
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Forest Service · MSHA ID 3502367
    Abandoned
  2. DEVILS LAKE PORTABLE CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Devil'S Lake Rock Company · MSHA ID 3501098
    Abandoned
  3. Drift Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Devil'S Lake Rock Company · MSHA ID 3503026
    Abandoned
  4. Ford Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Frank Ford Company · MSHA ID 3502842
    Abandoned
  5. Hercher Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gary E Hercher Crushing · MSHA ID 3503331
    Abandoned
  6. Indian Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Braxling Brothers Trucking Company · MSHA ID 3502830
    Abandoned
  7. Iron Mountain Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oregon State Highway Department · MSHA ID 3502442
    Abandoned
  8. Iron Mtn Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tidewater Crushing Company · MSHA ID 3500989
    Abandoned
  9. James B. Sweitz Dump Trucking
    Surface metal/non-metal · James B. Sweitz Dump Trucking · MSHA ID 3503632
    Abandoned
  10. KAUFFMAN PORTABLE #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kauffman Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 3503492
    Abandoned
  11. Lunstedt Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · D C & L H Lunstedt Company · MSHA ID 3502556
    Abandoned
  12. Maco Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Braxling & Braxling Inc · MSHA ID 3502791
    Abandoned
  13. Minski Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Three Way Portable Crushing · MSHA ID 3500011
    Abandoned
  14. Osterman Cabin Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Longview Fibre Company · MSHA ID 3502502
    Abandoned
  15. Pankey Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Publishers Paper Company · MSHA ID 3503042
    Abandoned
  16. Portable #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · D K Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 3503416
    Abandoned
  17. Portable #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · D.K. Quarries · MSHA ID 3503727
    Abandoned
  18. Portable 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tri Agg Inc. · MSHA ID 3503795
    Abandoned
  19. Siletz Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Toledo Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3500801
    Abandoned
  20. Table Mountain Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · R S Burch Company · MSHA ID 3502857
    Abandoned
  21. Tidewater Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tidewater Crushing Company · MSHA ID 3502758
    Abandoned
  22. Tree Farm
    Surface metal/non-metal · Devils Lake Rock Company · MSHA ID 3503563
    Abandoned
  23. Widow Creek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Grahn'S Construction Company · MSHA ID 3502596
    Abandoned
  24. Yaquina Head Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yaquina Head Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 3500141
    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
Borrow Pit 37
Quarry 32
Quarry 22
Gravel Pit 20
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 7
Borrow Pit 7
Quarry - Rock 2
Sand Pit 2
Prospect Pit 1
Gravel 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.