Abandoned mines in Hot Springs County, Wyoming

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   51 26.7%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   46 24.1%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   10 5.2%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   22 11.5%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   25 13.1%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   6 3.1%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   31 16.2%

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.

Problem types carry OSMRE's priority prefix: P1 and P2 are threats to health, safety and property, P3 is environmental. A problem area is a cluster of problems reclaimed as one project; several rows can share one location.

1. Brown Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Canyon Concrete & Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4801251
   Abandoned 1981-07-13
2. Coleman Coal Mine Ug

   Underground coal · T-K Coal Company · MSHA ID 4800079
   Abandoned 1971-02-12
3. CRUSHER #2

   Surface metal/non-metal · Mc Garvin-Moberly Construction Company · MSHA ID 4801574
   Abandoned 2023-09-14
4. Crusher No 1

   Surface metal/non-metal · H & R Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4801430
   Abandoned 1987-06-05
5. CRUSHER NO 1

   Surface metal/non-metal · Valley Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 4801428
   Abandoned 2003-01-23
6. Crusher No 2

   Surface metal/non-metal · Valley Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 4800301
   Abandoned 1989-07-05
7. D & A CRUSHER & WASHPLANT

   Surface metal/non-metal · D & A Construction & Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 4801600
   Abandoned 2006-10-01
8. Grass Creek Mine

   Underground coal · Dusky Diamond Coal Company · MSHA ID 4800077
   Abandoned 1975-02-18
9. Grass Creek Mine

   Surface coal · Spring Gulch Coal Company · MSHA ID 4800995
   Abandoned 2023-04-05
10. Lucerne Mine

    Surface metal/non-metal · Wyo-Ben Inc · MSHA ID 4801188
    Abandoned 1988-09-14
11. N-Vam

    Surface metal/non-metal · N-Vam · MSHA ID 4801120
    Abandoned 1979-09-24
12. Owl Creek Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Prince Inc · MSHA ID 4801426
    Abandoned 1985-09-03
13. Rainbow #2

    Surface metal/non-metal · Rainbow Rock Company · MSHA ID 4801480
    Abandoned 1988-09-06
14. Sand Draw

    Surface coal · Resource Exploration & Mining Inc · MSHA ID 4801390
    Abandoned 1983-06-01
15. W A R Crusher #1

    Surface metal/non-metal · W A R Inc · MSHA ID 4801472
    Abandoned 1989-09-06
16. Wilson Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Canyon Concrete & Excavating Inc · MSHA ID 4801250
    Abandoned 1981-06-17
17. Wind River Quarry

    Surface metal/non-metal · Wind River Quarry · MSHA ID 4801659
    Abandoned 2017-07-17

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Fremont County 2,398
• Crook County 919
• Carbon County 713
• Sweetwater County 691
• Albany County 428
• Big Horn County 427
• Johnson County 254
• Natrona County 231
• Lincoln County 212
• Converse County 198
• Park County 179
• Campbell County 179

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.