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Abandoned mines › Wisconsin
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Polk County, Wisconsin

Polk County, Wisconsin has 179 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1950–1993. MSHA's register carries 26 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Polk 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)
179
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
26
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits20 quadrangle maps, published 1950–1993 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
    2 1.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    177 98.9%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned26 on register
  1. Alden Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kessler Construction Corp · MSHA ID 4702586
    Abandoned
  2. Aldon-Eng Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Roadway Surfacing Inc · MSHA ID 4702587
    Abandoned
  3. Apple River Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Polk County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4702573
    Abandoned
  4. Bohn Pit-Frederic Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cemstone Ready Mix · MSHA ID 4702550
    Abandoned
  5. Centuria Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lewis Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 4702707
    Abandoned
  6. Frank Svoboda Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Polk County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4702670
    Abandoned
  7. Friendshuh Farms Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Friendshuh Farms · MSHA ID 4703729
    Abandoned
  8. Harris Doll Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Polk County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4702733
    Abandoned
  9. Hatten Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · UCS, LLC · MSHA ID 4703960
    Abandoned
  10. Hendricks Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Duffek Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4702569
    Abandoned
  11. Hochstetler Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hochstetler Blacktop · MSHA ID 4702635
    Abandoned
  12. Jacobson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ostermann Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4702743
    Abandoned
  13. John Nelson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Polk County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4701199
    Abandoned
  14. Lippman/Fabtec Jaw Plant #83005
    Surface metal/non-metal · Frattalone Companies Inc · MSHA ID 2103619
    Abandoned
  15. Miller & Highway 8 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cemstone Ready Mix · MSHA ID 4702572
    Abandoned
  16. Osceola Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Yellow River Supply Corp · MSHA ID 4702551
    Abandoned
  17. Polk County Lime Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jeff Antczak Trucking LLC · MSHA ID 4700135
    Abandoned
  18. Polk County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Polk County Highway Department · MSHA ID 4702557
    Abandoned
  19. Polk County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lewis Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 4702773
    Abandoned
  20. Screen Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Palmer Gravel, Inc. · MSHA ID 4703393
    Abandoned
  21. Screening Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Polk County Highway Dept. · MSHA ID 4703292
    Abandoned
  22. Selzler Excavation Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Selzler Excavation Inc · MSHA ID 4702883
    Abandoned
  23. Simonson Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lewis Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 4702723
    Abandoned
  24. Skidmore Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bakker Landscaping · MSHA ID 4702667
    Abandoned
  25. UCS Balsam Lake
    Surface metal/non-metal · Unity Customer Services LLC · MSHA ID 4703787
    Abandoned
  26. WI Portable Wash 384 (A5588 Wash Plant)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cemstone Ready Mix · MSHA ID 4703322
    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 111
Gravel Pit 45
Sand Pit 17
Quarry 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 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.