Mining Incidents
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in La Crosse County, Wisconsin

La Crosse County, Wisconsin has 121 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1947–1993. MSHA's register carries 21 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering La Crosse 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)
121
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
21
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1947–1993 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
    7 5.8%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    114 94.2%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned21 on register
  1. Bahr Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ostreng Construction Company · MSHA ID 4700568
    Abandoned
  2. Crusher No. 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Central Contracting & Materials Inc · MSHA ID 4703101
    Abandoned
  3. Dredge #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · J F Brennan Company Inc · MSHA ID 4703894
    Abandoned
  4. FINLEY SCREEN II
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur Overgaard Division · MSHA ID 4703134
    Abandoned
  5. HEWITT ROBBIN I
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur Overgaard Division · MSHA ID 4703023
    Abandoned
  6. Kendhammer Quarry & Mill
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur Overgaard Division · MSHA ID 4701109
    Abandoned
  7. La Crosse County Operations
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur Overgaard Inc · MSHA ID 4702640
    Abandoned
  8. La Crosse Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · La Crosse Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4700876
    Abandoned
  9. Ober Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Edward Kraemer & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4701839
    Abandoned
  10. Plant #15
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Division Mathy Construction Co · MSHA ID 4703403
    Abandoned
  11. PLANT #25
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Div/Mathy Construction Co · MSHA ID 4701102
    Abandoned
  12. Plant #27
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Div/Mathy Construction Co · MSHA ID 4702651
    Abandoned
  13. PLANT #46
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Division Mathy Construction · MSHA ID 4703152
    Abandoned
  14. Plant #48
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Division Mathy Construction Co · MSHA ID 4703133
    Abandoned
  15. PLANT #49
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials DivisionMathy Construction · MSHA ID 4703149
    Abandoned
  16. PLANT #52
    Surface metal/non-metal · River City Stone · MSHA ID 4703197
    Abandoned
  17. PLANT #56
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Div/Mathy Construction Co · MSHA ID 4703193
    Abandoned
  18. Plant #63
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Division Mathy Construction · MSHA ID 2103241
    Abandoned
  19. Plant #65
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Division Mathy Construction · MSHA ID 2103290
    Abandoned
  20. Sand Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur Overgaard Inc · MSHA ID 4702636
    Abandoned
  21. SCREEN PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Harter Trucking Inc · MSHA ID 4703277
    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
Quarry 66
Sand Pit 16
Gravel Pit 13
Quarry 9
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 5
Sand Pit 4
Disturbed Surface 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 2
Shale Pit 2
Gravel Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Other counties in WisconsinAll 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.