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Abandoned mines › Wyoming
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Sublette County, Wyoming

Sublette County, Wyoming has 80 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1958–1986, including 4 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 28 prospect pits; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 8 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 25 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Sublette 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)
80
Mine openings
4
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
25
2 features carry a name28 prospect pits27 quadrangle maps, published 1958–1986 8 OSMRE problems, 8 reclaimed 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
    6 6.8%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    28 31.8%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 4.5%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    44 50.0%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 2.3%
  6. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    2 2.3%
  7. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    2 2.3%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Cottonwood Mine Adit
Kleinstick Mine Adit

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.

OSMRE abandoned mine land problems8 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Linc1078 P3 Pits Reclamation Completed
Linc1078 P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Subl1006 P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Subl1006 P2 Portals Reclamation Completed
Subl1006 P3 Haul Road Reclamation Completed
Subl1006 P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Tosi Creek Phosphate P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Completed
Tosi Creek Phosphate P2 Portals Reclamation Completed

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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned25 on register
  1. 133 Crusher H-K Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · H-K Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 4801275
    Abandoned
  2. 5X12 Screen-It
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sublette County Road and Bridge · MSHA ID 4801719
    Abandoned
  3. Bausman Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lewis & Lewis Inc · MSHA ID 4801756
    Abandoned
  4. Bondurant Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Clark'S Ready-Mix & Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4801031
    Abandoned
  5. Christman Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nicholls & Lewis Concrete · MSHA ID 4801278
    Abandoned
  6. Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Green River Rock Inc · MSHA ID 4801721
    Abandoned
  7. Crushing Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · EnerCrest Products Inc · MSHA ID 4801631
    Abandoned
  8. Finley Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Joe's Concrete and Lumber Inc. · MSHA ID 4801627
    Abandoned
  9. Fisherman Sand And Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · C R Roberts & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4801097
    Abandoned
  10. High Plains Ventures Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Archer Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4801395
    Abandoned
  11. IMC PIT 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Intermountain Contractors LLC. · MSHA ID 4801765
    Abandoned
  12. J J Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Fairbanks Jones LLC · MSHA ID 4801653
    Abandoned
  13. Kendall Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Black Mesa Advanced Fission · MSHA ID 4801885
    Abandoned
  14. Mobile Crusher 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · E-Cubed Industries, LLC · MSHA ID 4801880
    Abandoned
  15. Noble Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Noble Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4801692
    Abandoned
  16. Noble Screen
    Surface metal/non-metal · Noble Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4801693
    Abandoned
  17. Paradise Road Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · M & N Equipment LLC · MSHA ID 4801584
    Abandoned
  18. Reed #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allan K Reed · MSHA ID 4801291
    Abandoned
  19. Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Koch Construction, Inc · MSHA ID 4801673
    Abandoned
  20. Screen Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Green River Rock · MSHA ID 4801696
    Abandoned
  21. Screener
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sublette County Road & Bridge · MSHA ID 4801688
    Abandoned
  22. SHRIVER GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Shriver Gravel · MSHA ID 4801038
    Abandoned
  23. Sims Corporation Crusher #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sims Corp · MSHA ID 4801444
    Abandoned
  24. Sink Hole Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lamb Construction Company · MSHA ID 4801163
    Abandoned
  25. White Mountain Crushing
    Surface metal/non-metal · White Mountain Operating, LLC · MSHA ID 4801809
    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
Prospect Pit 28
Gravel Pit 25
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 8
Gravel Pit 7
Disturbed Surface - Pit 4
Adit 4
P3 Spoil Area 2
P2 Portals 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 2
Borrow Pit 1
Borrow Pit 1
P3 Pits 1
P3 Haul Road 1
Other counties in WyomingAll 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.