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Abandoned mines › Wisconsin
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Pierce County, Wisconsin

Pierce County, Wisconsin has 92 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1946–1994, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts). MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Pierce 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)
92
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1946–1994 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
    1 1.1%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    10 10.9%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    81 88.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned18 on register
  1. 4 X 14 WASHPLANT #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · Camas Minnesota · MSHA ID 4702893
    Abandoned
  2. Bay City Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Wisconsin Specialty Sands, Inc. · MSHA ID 4703473
    Abandoned
  3. Bay City Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Wisconsin Industrial Sand Company · MSHA ID 4703519
    Abandoned
  4. Bay City Silica
    Underground metal/non-metal · Bay City Silica Division/Treco Sales Inc · MSHA ID 4701146
    Abandoned
  5. Don Borst Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pierce County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4702222
    Abandoned
  6. Hager City Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Wisconsin Specialty Sands, Inc. · MSHA ID 4703497
    Abandoned
  7. Hager City Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wisconsin Industrial Sand Company, LLC · MSHA ID 4703520
    Abandoned
  8. Kassac Qy
    Surface metal/non-metal · Edward Kraemer & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4701622
    Abandoned
  9. Lake Tom Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · County Ready Mix Corp · MSHA ID 4703470
    Abandoned
  10. Maiden Rock
    Underground metal/non-metal · Wisconsin Industrial Sand Company, LLC · MSHA ID 4703110
    Abandoned
  11. MAIDEN ROCK
    Underground metal/non-metal · Wisconsin Frac Sand Inc · MSHA ID 4701147
    Abandoned
  12. Morrow Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Edward Kraemer & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4701835
    Abandoned
  13. PETERSON MINE
    Surface metal/non-metal · TOTAL EXCAVATING · MSHA ID 4703834
    Abandoned
  14. Pierce County Operation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arthur Overgaard Inc · MSHA ID 4702643
    Abandoned
  15. Portable Plant No. 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pierce County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4703439
    Abandoned
  16. RHEX WWP
    Facility metal/non-metal · RAMSEY HILL EXPLORATION LLC · MSHA ID 4703751
    Abandoned
  17. Trimbelle Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · MS Holst LLC · MSHA ID 4703631
    Abandoned
  18. US Highway 10 Sand Processing Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Muskie Proppant LLC · MSHA ID 4703678
    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 34
Quarry 21
Sand Pit 14
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 9
Gravel Pit 4
Quarry 3
Sand Pit 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Sand and Gravel Pit 1
Disturbed Surface 1
Adit 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.