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Abandoned mines › Wisconsin
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Portage County, Wisconsin

Portage County, Wisconsin has 161 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1955–1991. MSHA's register carries 19 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Portage 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)
161
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
19
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits18 quadrangle maps, published 1955–1991 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
    42 26.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    119 73.9%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned19 on register
  1. Arnott Wash Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703296
    Abandoned
  2. Boulder Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703344
    Abandoned
  3. Breitenstein Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Edward Kraemer & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4701751
    Abandoned
  4. Cam Construction Company, Inc.
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cam Construction Company, Inc. · MSHA ID 4702787
    Abandoned
  5. CR 810
    Surface metal/non-metal · Somers Aggregates Limited · MSHA ID 4703205
    Abandoned
  6. CR-180
    Surface metal/non-metal · Somers Aggregates Limited · MSHA ID 4703234
    Abandoned
  7. Gosh Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Edward Kraemer & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4701841
    Abandoned
  8. Hewitt Robbins Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703345
    Abandoned
  9. Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703392
    Abandoned
  10. Plant #70
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milestone Materials Division Mathy Construction · MSHA ID 4703343
    Abandoned
  11. PLANT 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Glodowski Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4703150
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers, LLC. · MSHA ID 4703346
    Abandoned
  13. Portage Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · R M Hinze Inc · MSHA ID 4702665
    Abandoned
  14. Screening Plant #1919
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703501
    Abandoned
  15. Simplicity Rip Rap Plant #1915
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703514
    Abandoned
  16. Somers Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Somers Landscaping Inc · MSHA ID 4702121
    Abandoned
  17. STUCZYNSKI CUSTER PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stuczynski Trucking & Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4702774
    Abandoned
  18. VSI Crusher #1923
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fahrner Asphalt Sealers LLC · MSHA ID 4703502
    Abandoned
  19. WP-820
    Surface metal/non-metal · Somers Aggregates LTD · MSHA ID 4702955
    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 65
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 41
Gravel Pit 24
Sand Pit 22
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Quarry 3
Quarry 1
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
Sand Pit 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.