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Abandoned mines › Utah
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Duchesne County, Utah

Duchesne County, Utah has 126 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1962–1996, including 36 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 34 prospect pits; 6 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 12 problems in the county, 3 of them not yet reclaimed. 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 Duchesne 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)
126
Mine openings
36
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
3
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
6 features carry a name34 prospect pits28 quadrangle maps, published 1962–1996 12 OSMRE problems, 9 reclaimed 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
    40 29.0%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    34 24.6%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    56 40.6%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 3.6%
  5. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    1 0.7%
  6. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    2 1.4%
Named features on the maps6 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Castle Peak Mine Mine Shaft
Frank Mine Adit
Paint Mine Adit
Pariette Mine Mine Shaft
Payne Mine Adit
Raven 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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems12 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Farm Creek Right P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Farm Creek Right P3 Gobs Reclamation Completed
Red Creek P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Red Creek P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Red Creek P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Red Creek P2 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Red Creek P3 Equipment Facility Reclamation Completed
Sand Trap P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Sand Trap P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Winchester Mine P3 Gobs In Reclamation
Winchester Mine P3 Mine Opening In Reclamation
Winchester Mine P3 Spoil Area In Reclamation

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned24 on register
  1. 24-1040
    Surface metal/non-metal · W W Clyde & Co · MSHA ID 4202433
    Abandoned
  2. A-1 Rock
    Surface metal/non-metal · A-1 Rock/Max Chapoose · MSHA ID 4202568
    Abandoned
  3. CKC Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · CKC Asphalt · MSHA ID 4202695
    Abandoned
  4. Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Skewes & Hamilton Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4201966
    Abandoned
  5. Crusher B
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chapman Materials · MSHA ID 4202472
    Abandoned
  6. Duchesne Ready-Mix Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duchesne Ready Mix Company · MSHA ID 4201643
    Abandoned
  7. Gardner Construction Co Sand And Gr
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hall Gardner Construction Company · MSHA ID 4201111
    Abandoned
  8. GATE CANYON QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · United Stone & Design · MSHA ID 4202273
    Abandoned
  9. Golden Phoenix
    Underground metal/non-metal · Linda Muir · MSHA ID 4201986
    Abandoned
  10. Inpacter Screen 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vertical Edge Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 4202551
    Abandoned
  11. JRJ SERVICE, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · JRJ Service Inc · MSHA ID 4202314
    Abandoned
  12. Karman Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harris Bethers Company · MSHA ID 4201642
    Abandoned
  13. Lakefork Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harris Bethers Construction Company · MSHA ID 4201110
    Abandoned
  14. Paint Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nub Associates · MSHA ID 4201683
    Abandoned
  15. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · G R Porter & Sons Construction · MSHA ID 4202001
    Abandoned
  16. Portable Crusher No. 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duchesne County · MSHA ID 4201696
    Abandoned
  17. Portables
    Surface metal/non-metal · JC Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4202530
    Abandoned
  18. RM Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · RM Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 4202492
    Abandoned
  19. Robbins Blue Bench Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Robbins Construction Company · MSHA ID 4201700
    Abandoned
  20. Southwest #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Red Leaf Resources · MSHA ID 4202512
    Abandoned
  21. Stillwater Dam Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fisher Industries · MSHA ID 4201943
    Abandoned
  22. Twist Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · CKC Asphalt · MSHA ID 4202704
    Abandoned
  23. Upper Stillwater Dam Project
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tyger Construction Company · MSHA ID 4201903
    Abandoned
  24. White Property
    Surface metal/non-metal · Columbia Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4201825
    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 48
Prospect Pit 34
Adit 20
Mine Shaft 16
Borrow Pit 5
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 2
P1 Vertical Openings 2
Quarry 2
P3 Gobs 2
P2 Vertical Openings 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P3 Equipment Facility 1
P1 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 1
Borrow Pit 1
P2 Portals 1
P3 Mine Opening 1
Other counties in UtahAll 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.