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Abandoned mines › Colorado
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Alamosa County, Colorado

Alamosa County, Colorado has 29 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1965–2001, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 2 prospect pits; 1 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 2 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 17 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Alamosa 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)
29
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
17
1 features carry a name2 prospect pits8 quadrangle maps, published 1965–2001 2 OSMRE problems, 2 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
    3 9.7%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    2 6.5%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    1 3.2%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    25 80.6%
Named features on the maps1 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Swab 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 problems2 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Alamosa - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Portals Reclamation Completed
Alamosa - Non-coal-county-wide P1 Vertical Openings 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 Abandoned17 on register
  1. Alamosa Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · J & J Gravel Company · MSHA ID 0502984
    Abandoned
  2. Crusher #1 Fassoli
    Surface metal/non-metal · Andersen Construction Company · MSHA ID 0504066
    Abandoned
  3. Gallegos Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503921
    Abandoned
  4. MESITA HILL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mwca Inc · MSHA ID 0500433
    Abandoned
  5. Myers Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · J & J Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 0503872
    Abandoned
  6. P-11-6626
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Transportation · MSHA ID 0504313
    Abandoned
  7. P11-6620 Portable Conveyor
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503448
    Abandoned
  8. PIONEER #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Asphalt Constructors Inc · MSHA ID 0504455
    Abandoned
  9. Portable Conveyor Plant P11-6602
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0503336
    Abandoned
  10. Portable Conveyor Plant P11-6623
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Department Of Highways · MSHA ID 0504325
    Abandoned
  11. PORTABLE CRSHING PLT 03
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0503305
    Abandoned
  12. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Aggregate Company Of New Mexico Inc · MSHA ID 0504395
    Abandoned
  13. PORTABLE CRUSHING PLANT #6
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0504111
    Abandoned
  14. Portable Crushing Plant No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0503919
    Abandoned
  15. PORTABLE CRUSHING PLT 04
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 0504109
    Abandoned
  16. SAN ACACIO PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mwca Inc · MSHA ID 0504417
    Abandoned
  17. Zapata Crushing
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Const Co Inc & Asphalt Gravel Prod Inc · MSHA ID 0503710
    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 13
Gravel Pit 11
Prospect Pit 2
Borrow Pit 1
Disturbed Surface - Pit 1
P1 Portals 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
Adit 1
Other counties in ColoradoAll 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.