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Abandoned mines › Vermont
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Orange County, Vermont

Orange County, Vermont has 80 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1920–1988, including 9 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 12 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 Orange 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)
80
Mine openings
9
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
24
12 features carry a name0 prospect pits20 quadrangle maps, published 1920–1988 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
    9 11.2%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    9 11.2%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    58 72.5%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    4 5.0%
Named features on the maps12 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Barre Granite Quarries Quarry
Elizabeth Mine Mine
Elizabeth Mine Open Pit Mine area
Elizabeth Mine Open Pit Mine
Elizabeth Mine Tailings - Undifferentiated area
Ely Mine Adit
Ely Mine Mine Dump area
Ely Mine Mine Dump area
Ely Mine Mine Dump area
Ely Mine Mine Shaft
Talc Mine Open Pit Mine
Talc 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 Abandoned24 on register
  1. Adams Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Chelsea · MSHA ID 4300230
    Abandoned
  2. Barnaby Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Cullough Garage · MSHA ID 4300300
    Abandoned
  3. Benjamin Stone Works
    Surface metal/non-metal · Benjamin Stone Works · MSHA ID 4300680
    Abandoned
  4. Blaisdell Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kenneth Blaisdell · MSHA ID 4300232
    Abandoned
  5. CAR-O-LIN
    Surface metal/non-metal · Car-O-Lin · MSHA ID 4300509
    Abandoned
  6. Durco Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duranleau Construction Corp · MSHA ID 4300464
    Abandoned
  7. Farnham Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Farnham Company · MSHA ID 4300279
    Abandoned
  8. HEC-Norberg Metso Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hebert Excavation Corporation · MSHA ID 4300793
    Abandoned
  9. Jones Brothers Dark Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wells-Lamson Quarry Company Inc · MSHA ID 4300376
    Abandoned
  10. Koldberg Screen #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town of Randolph · MSHA ID 4300629
    Abandoned
  11. LONGMOORE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Longmoore Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 4300455
    Abandoned
  12. Orange Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town of Orange · MSHA ID 4300752
    Abandoned
  13. PICKETT PIT AND MILL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pickett'S Inc · MSHA ID 4300278
    Abandoned
  14. Pike Industries Inc - C632
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pike Industries Inc · MSHA ID 4300627
    Abandoned
  15. Pirie & Adam Quarries
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rock Of Ages Corp · MSHA ID 4300022
    Abandoned
  16. PIT 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Town Of Williamstown · MSHA ID 4300231
    Abandoned
  17. Portable Pioneer Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pickett's Inc. · MSHA ID 4300636
    Abandoned
  18. Portable Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pickett's Inc · MSHA ID 4300462
    Abandoned
  19. SAYRE GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Alice M Sayre · MSHA ID 4300467
    Abandoned
  20. STACY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stacy Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 4300470
    Abandoned
  21. STONE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ware Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4300428
    Abandoned
  22. TOWLE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Towle Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4300505
    Abandoned
  23. VAUGHAN FARMS
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vaughan Farms · MSHA ID 4300482
    Abandoned
  24. Willard B Martin
    Surface metal/non-metal · Willard B Martin Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 4300120
    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
Sand Pit 30
Gravel Pit 18
Adit 8
Quarry 7
Open Pit Mine 4
Mine Dump 3
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Sand Pit 2
Mine Shaft 1
Quarry 1
Mine 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Tailings - Undifferentiated 1
Other counties in VermontAll 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.