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Abandoned mines › Oregon
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Malheur County, Oregon

Malheur County, Oregon has 1,060 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1991, including 71 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 739 prospect pits; 14 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 31 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Malheur 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)
1,060
Mine openings
71
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
31
14 features carry a name739 prospect pits89 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1991 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
    71 6.7%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    739 69.7%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    18 1.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    218 20.6%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    14 1.3%
Named features on the maps14 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Buckhorn Mine Adit
Cleveland Mine Adit
Golden Eagle Mine Adit
Golden Eagle Mine Open Pit Mine area
Humboldt Mine Mine Shaft
Humboldt Mine Mine Shaft
Little Queen Mine Open Pit Mine area
Monohon Tunnel Adit
Monohon Tunnel Adit
Opalite Mine Open Pit Mine
Overshot Group Mine Adit
Overshot Group Mine Adit
Red Rock Quarry Quarry - Rock
Sunnyslope Pit Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned31 on register
  1. Basin Resources
    Surface metal/non-metal · Basin Resources Inc · MSHA ID 3503027
    Abandoned
  2. BEVERLY MARIE
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gem Shop Inc · MSHA ID 3503495
    Abandoned
  3. Blue Mountain Pass Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Continental Crushing & Leasing · MSHA ID 3502977
    Abandoned
  4. Bob'S Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bob'S Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3503317
    Abandoned
  5. Brogan Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gold Bridge Holdings Ltd · MSHA ID 3503078
    Abandoned
  6. Crusher # 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Seubert Excavators Inc · MSHA ID 3503441
    Abandoned
  7. Dooley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Minerals Development Group, LLC · MSHA ID 3503686
    Abandoned
  8. Fire & Sage
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chad Williams · MSHA ID 3503941
    Abandoned
  9. Flynn Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Flynn Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 3500489
    Abandoned
  10. GPM-1
    Surface metal/non-metal · M.R. Miller Inc. · MSHA ID 3503692
    Abandoned
  11. Kindschy Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jim Mendiola Gravel Products · MSHA ID 3503588
    Abandoned
  12. Lee
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lee Atkins · MSHA ID 3503766
    Abandoned
  13. Loe Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oregon State Highway Department · MSHA ID 3502820
    Abandoned
  14. Mineral Valley Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mineral Valley LLC · MSHA ID 3503738
    Abandoned
  15. Mormon Basin
    Surface metal/non-metal · Veta Gold Inc · MSHA ID 3502897
    Abandoned
  16. Next Tuesday
    Surface metal/non-metal · Diatec Corp · MSHA ID 3502701
    Abandoned
  17. Nyssa Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clearwater Concrete, Inc. · MSHA ID 3500501
    Abandoned
  18. Ontario Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Idaho Materials & Construction · MSHA ID 3503437
    Abandoned
  19. ONTARIO PIT & PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clearwater Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 3502525
    Abandoned
  20. Ontario Redi-Mix Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ontario Redi-Mix · MSHA ID 3500710
    Abandoned
  21. Oregron Concrete PP
    Surface metal/non-metal · Oregon Concrete LLC · MSHA ID 3503580
    Abandoned
  22. PORTABLE CRUSHER #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ontario Asphalt & Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 3503372
    Abandoned
  23. Portable Plant # 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pacific West Coast Trucking, Inc. · MSHA ID 3503552
    Abandoned
  24. RILEY HILL GENERAL CONTRACTOR, I
    Surface metal/non-metal · Riley Hill General Contractor Inc · MSHA ID 3503384
    Abandoned
  25. TEAGUE MINERAL PRODUCTS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Teague Mineral Products · MSHA ID 3503250
    Abandoned
  26. Three Valleys Mine #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mineral Valley LLC · MSHA ID 3503717
    Abandoned
  27. Vale Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vale Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 3503126
    Abandoned
  28. Valeview Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mendiola Gravel Products · MSHA ID 3503127
    Abandoned
  29. Wilcox Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · George's Shop & Rock Inc · MSHA ID 3503561
    Abandoned
  30. Wildhorse Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tepe Gemstone Supply Inc · MSHA ID 3502812
    Abandoned
  31. Wright Gold
    Underground metal/non-metal · Wright Gold · MSHA ID 3503730
    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 739
Borrow Pit 74
Gravel Pit 69
Adit 60
Gravel Pit 30
Borrow Pit 16
Tailings - Undifferentiated 14
Quarry 14
Mine Shaft 11
Quarry 9
Open Pit Mine 7
Open Pit Mine 7
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Cinder Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Quarry - Rock 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
Cinder 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.