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Abandoned mines › Wisconsin
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Oconto County, Wisconsin

Oconto County, Wisconsin has 244 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1952–1974. MSHA's register carries 22 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Oconto 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)
244
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits28 quadrangle maps, published 1952–1974 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
    59 24.2%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    185 75.8%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned22 on register
  1. Bake Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shaw & Radley Inc · MSHA ID 4702613
    Abandoned
  2. CRUSHER
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nelson Trucking Co. · MSHA ID 4702711
    Abandoned
  3. Crushing Plant # 02
    Surface metal/non-metal · DMK Inc · MSHA ID 4703529
    Abandoned
  4. Crushing Plant #01
    Surface metal/non-metal · KCG Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4702980
    Abandoned
  5. DMK, INC.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dmk Inc · MSHA ID 4702221
    Abandoned
  6. Hansens Excavating & Construction
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hansen's Excavating & Construction · MSHA ID 4703416
    Abandoned
  7. Hogan Enterprises
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hogan Enterprises Inc · MSHA ID 4702428
    Abandoned
  8. Klatts Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shawano County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4701776
    Abandoned
  9. LYCON Wellnitz Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · LYCON, Inc. · MSHA ID 4703358
    Abandoned
  10. Oconto County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jackie Foster Inc · MSHA ID 4701387
    Abandoned
  11. Peters Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Trucking Company Inc · MSHA ID 4702231
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jackie Foster, Inc. · MSHA ID 4700057
    Abandoned
  13. Portable Wash Plant #02
    Surface metal/non-metal · KCG Excavating Inc. · MSHA ID 4703353
    Abandoned
  14. PORTABLE WASH PLANT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bonduel Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4703143
    Abandoned
  15. Robiacke Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Peters Construction Company · MSHA ID 4702027
    Abandoned
  16. SAMPSON SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · SAMPSON SAND & GRAVEL, INC. · MSHA ID 4702871
    Abandoned
  17. SAMPSON SAND & GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sampson Sand & Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 4703192
    Abandoned
  18. SCHAAL QUARRY
    Surface metal/non-metal · SCHAAL QUARRY · MSHA ID 4703414
    Abandoned
  19. Screening Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Elmer Hubbard · MSHA ID 4702958
    Abandoned
  20. THE CHASE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bonduel Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4703092
    Abandoned
  21. Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Five Star Trucking, Inc. · MSHA ID 4703359
    Abandoned
  22. WASHPLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nelson Trucking · MSHA ID 4702575
    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 112
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 45
Sand Pit 35
Gravel Pit 27
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 14
Sand Pit 5
Quarry 4
Quarry 2
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.