Abandoned gold mines in the United States

What "abandoned" means here

It is MSHA's own status for a mine that has stopped operating and is no longer an active inspection target. It does not say the site was cleaned up or sealed, and it does not say who owns the land today. Many records are decades old; some have no coordinates because the original paperwork never gave a location.

Who owns the land under abandoned gold mines

BLM's public land dataset places 419 mapped abandoned gold mines on a surface owner: 129 (31%) on federal land, 199 (47%) on private or unmapped land, 38 (9%) on state land and 53 (13%) other or undetermined. Federal land is not an invitation to go underground, and private land means trespassing. The county pages show the land status of each record.

Why we do not give directions

Gold Mines Map shows abandoned records by county and, where MSHA or USGS have coordinates, as dots on the state and county maps. We do not publish directions or encourage visits. Old shafts and adits are among the deadliest places people walk into by accident. USGS also records 37,084 historic gold producers that are not in the MSHA list; they are on the county pages.

Abandoned gold mine records by state