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Abandoned mines › Louisiana
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana

Ouachita Parish, Louisiana has 70 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1957–1994. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 7 problems in the county, 7 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 13 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ouachita Parish, 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)
70
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
7
MSHA mines marked abandoned
13
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits13 quadrangle maps, published 1957–1994 7 OSMRE problems, 0 reclaimed 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    35 45.5%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    35 45.5%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    2 2.6%
  4. Mills, tipples and facilities
    processing plants and hazardous structures
    2 2.6%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    3 3.9%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems7 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Oa170203-s Chenier Brake-lenwil Pit P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Oa170203-s Chenier Brake-lenwil Pit P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Oa170203-s Chenier Brake-lenwil Pit P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending
Oa170203-s Chenier Brake-lenwil Pit P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Pending
Oa190503-swartz-spring Hill Cemeter P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Oa190503-swartz-spring Hill Cemeter P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Oa190503-swartz-spring Hill Cemeter P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities Reclamation Pending

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 Abandoned13 on register
  1. Biedenhorn Dredge And Plant No 2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monroe Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 1600340
    Abandoned
  2. Browning Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · D & J Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1600907
    Abandoned
  3. Calhoun And Mcguire Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Northest Louisiana Dirt Contractors · MSHA ID 1600920
    Abandoned
  4. Century Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Century Ready-Mix Corporation · MSHA ID 1601019
    Abandoned
  5. D&J West Monroe Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · D & J Construction Co., LLC · MSHA ID 1601430
    Abandoned
  6. Impact Crusher
    Facility metal/non-metal · Louisiana Industries · MSHA ID 1601120
    Abandoned
  7. MONROE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Diamond B Construction · MSHA ID 1601363
    Abandoned
  8. Montgomery Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Century Ready-Mix Corporation · MSHA ID 1601047
    Abandoned
  9. No 1 Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Monroe Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 1600366
    Abandoned
  10. Ouachita Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ouachita Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 1601601
    Abandoned
  11. PERRYVILLE AGGREGATES PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Txi (A/K/A Texas Industries Inc) · MSHA ID 1600335
    Abandoned
  12. Rutledge Dredge And Plant No 3
    Surface metal/non-metal · Monroe Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 1600338
    Abandoned
  13. Tusk Subsea
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tusk Subsea Services · MSHA ID 1601556
    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 26
Disturbed Surface 13
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 12
Disturbed Surface - Pit 7
Sand and Gravel Pit 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Gravel Pit 3
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 2
P2 Hazardous Equip & Facilities 2
Sand Pit 2
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 1
Other counties in LouisianaAll 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.