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Abandoned mines › South Dakota
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Brown County, South Dakota

Brown County, South Dakota has 67 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1952–1978. MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Brown 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)
67
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits19 quadrangle maps, published 1952–1978 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
    5 7.5%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    62 92.5%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned18 on register
  1. Grebein Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brown County Highway Department · MSHA ID 3901068
    Abandoned
  2. Henry Schaunaman Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brown County Highway Department · MSHA ID 3901067
    Abandoned
  3. Jung Pit And Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wellman Construction · MSHA ID 3901211
    Abandoned
  4. Knight Sand And Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Knight Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 3901191
    Abandoned
  5. Lindsey Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dahme Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 3900828
    Abandoned
  6. Mcneary Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Larson Construction Inc · MSHA ID 3900821
    Abandoned
  7. Orlin Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Benfit Construction · MSHA ID 3901065
    Abandoned
  8. Pickus Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pickus Construction Company · MSHA ID 3900278
    Abandoned
  9. Port #1 Lippmann 6224 Riprap Mach #R7100
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lien Transportation Company · MSHA ID 3901322
    Abandoned
  10. Port #2 Chieftain Screen #918
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lien Transportation Company · MSHA ID 3901423
    Abandoned
  11. Port #3 Warrior 1800 Power Screen #5003
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lien Transportation Company · MSHA ID 3901424
    Abandoned
  12. Schlosser Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lloyd Mcgregor Construction Company · MSHA ID 3901079
    Abandoned
  13. Schlosser Pit & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wellman Construction · MSHA ID 3901210
    Abandoned
  14. Schlosser Pit No 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ludwig Construction · MSHA ID 3901080
    Abandoned
  15. Schlosser Pit No 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Albert Beilke · MSHA ID 3901110
    Abandoned
  16. Unit # 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanlon Brothers · MSHA ID 3901552
    Abandoned
  17. Unit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Loomis Aggregates · MSHA ID 3901208
    Abandoned
  18. Wiedenbush
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dave Gustafson & Company Inc · MSHA ID 3901081
    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 41
Gravel Pit 18
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Disturbed Surface 2
Other counties in South DakotaAll 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.