Based on the analysis of the LIDAR terrain Digital Elevation Model (DEM), traces of opencast and underground mining of iron ore mining were located and classified. They occur in the zone of ore-bearing deposits outcropping on the north-eastern and north-western bounds of the Holy Cross Mountains. The DEM of an area covered by thirty-six (36) standard sheets of the Detailed Geological Map of Poland on a scale of 1:50,000 was thoroughly explored with remote sensing standards. Four types of ore recovery shafts with accompanying waste heaps were classified. The acquired data on the extent of former mining areas, covered with varying shafts and barren rock heaps could make a basis for distinguishing, according to historical data and in cooperation with archaeologists, the historical development stages of today’s steel industry. According to general knowledge, the iron industry in Europe instigate dates from the Roman times, in the I^st century BC to the IV^th century AD, throughout the earlier and the late medieval times, up to the most recent the 1970ties. The usefulness of the LIDAR method has already been amazingly confirmed in archaeological researches worldwide. Many discoveries of ling forgotten, even large entities resulting from human activities in Asia and Central America especially were discovered owed to the LIDAR DEM. Also, traces of human settlements from various historical periods were discovered that way in Poland. The applicability of DEM based on LIDAR data is, in geological studies of surficial geodynamic processes and in geological mapping in Poland, rather contested.