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Abandoned mines › Wisconsin
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Lafayette County, Wisconsin

Lafayette County, Wisconsin has 256 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1952–1962, including 32 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 11 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 11 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Lafayette 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)
256
Mine openings
32
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
11
11 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1952–1962 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
    32 12.5%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    16 6.2%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    135 52.7%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    73 28.5%
Named features on the maps11 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Blackstone Mine Mine Dump area
Blackstone Mine Mine Shaft
Burkett Mine Mine Dump area
Burkett Mine Mine Shaft
Calumet and Hecla Mine Mine Dump area
Calumet and Hecla Mine Mine Shaft
Lead Mine Mine
Leo V Mine Mine Shaft
Liberty Mine Mine Shaft
Mulcahy Mine Mine Shaft
New Dall Mine Mine Shaft

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 Abandoned11 on register
  1. Argyle Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · George Wendtlandt Inc · MSHA ID 4700261
    Abandoned
  2. Bear Hole Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Eagle-Picher Industries Inc · MSHA ID 4700641
    Abandoned
  3. Belmont Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ivey Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4700606
    Abandoned
  4. Calvert Quarry Or Calvert
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ivey Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4700307
    Abandoned
  5. Eagle-Picher Industries Inc Shullsb
    Underground metal/non-metal · Eagle-Picher Industries Inc · MSHA ID 4700043
    Abandoned
  6. Lafayette County Quarrries
    Surface metal/non-metal · G A Watson Inc · MSHA ID 4702807
    Abandoned
  7. Lange Or Lange Qry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ivey Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4700306
    Abandoned
  8. Munson Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · G A Watson Inc · MSHA ID 4700516
    Abandoned
  9. Portable
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mowry Bros LLC · MSHA ID 4702903
    Abandoned
  10. Portable Crushing Unit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jean Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4700070
    Abandoned
  11. Portable Unit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Glendenning Limestone & Redi-Mix Co Inc · MSHA ID 4702525
    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 110
Mine Dump 72
Mine Shaft 29
Quarry 23
Open Pit Mine 10
Open Pit Mine 4
Adit 3
Sand Pit 2
Mine 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Tailings - 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.