How many abandoned mines are in New Mexico?

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Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in New Mexico

New Mexico has 18,705 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1906–2006, including 4,455 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts), across 33 counties. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 925 problems in the state, 188 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 1,003 New Mexico mines with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps of New Mexico, every OSMRE abandoned mine land problem, and every MSHA-registered mine with status Abandoned, by county. Each county page lists the named features and links every MSHA mine to its own record.

Mapped mine features (USGS): 18,705
Mine openings: 4,455
OSMRE problems unreclaimed: 188
MSHA mines marked abandoned: 1,003

33 counties with mapped features706 features carry a name8,889 prospect pitsmaps published 1906–2006 925 OSMRE problems, 737 reclaimed271 problem areas (PADs), 95 with work left 7 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed The state program's own inventory estimate: ~20,069 features (IMCC-NAAMLP Hardrock AML Report 2025, Table 5, page 46).

By countyranked by mapped USGS features

County	USGS features	Openings	Named	OSMRE problems	Unreclaimed	MSHA abandoned
Grant County	5,221	1,933	201	24	8	79
Hidalgo County	1,747	427	46	12	1	19
Sierra County	1,497	561	61	10	0	68
Socorro County	1,259	220	52	38	9	43
Luna County	1,164	312	28	15	7	15
Lea County	890	2	0	0	0	23
Lincoln County	803	212	14	31	14	41
Sandoval County	650	59	34	34	12	42
McKinley County	621	96	55	180	35	71
Eddy County	591	32	6	3	1	67
Santa Fe County	566	70	23	56	22	56
Doña Ana County	482	68	14	6	0	63
Colfax County	343	100	17	88	50	19
Rio Arriba County	324	58	41	28	7	27
Otero County	311	55	17	4	3	22
Cibola County	282	41	38	2	1	20
San Juan County	272	89	12	363	13	63
Chaves County	247	0	0	0	0	31
Catron County	218	57	23	1	1	17
Bernalillo County	188	15	5	11	0	67
Torrance County	151	1	3	2	0	15
Taos County	144	43	10	13	1	21
Roosevelt County	122	0	0	0	0	9
Quay County	120	0	0	0	0	9
San Miguel County	114	1	4	4	3	19
Union County	112	1	0	0	0	16
Mora County	59	1	0	0	0	5
Curry County	54	0	0	0	0	11
Guadalupe County	43	0	2	0	0	11
De Baca County	40	1	0	0	0	4
Valencia County	36	0	0	0	0	30
Harding County	29	0	0	0	0	0
Los Alamos County	5	0	0	0	0	0

What the features are

Mine openings

shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings

4,801 24.5%
Prospect pits and trenches

shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine

8,889 45.3%
Mines and surface workings

labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings

900 4.6%
Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction

4,223 21.5%
Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

what mining left above ground

445 2.3%
Mills, tipples and facilities

processing plants and hazardous structures

18 0.1%
Other reclamation problems

highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory

342 1.7%
Other

symbols outside the classes above

12 0.1%

By source vocabularythe publishers' own terms

Feature type	Class	Source	Features
Prospect Pit	Prospect pits and trenches	USGS topo symbol (point)	8,868
Mine Shaft	Mine openings	USGS topo symbol (point)	2,617
Adit	Mine openings	USGS topo symbol (point)	1,825
Gravel Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	1,764
Gravel Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	1,372
Open Pit Mine	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (point)	349
Quarry	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	348
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	255
Open Pit Mine or Quarry	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (point)	169
Borrow Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	143
Disturbed Surface	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (area)	135
P2 Portals	Mine openings	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	113
P3 Gobs	Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	111
P1 Portals	Mine openings	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	104
Mine Dump	Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob	USGS topo symbol (area)	103
P1 Vertical Openings	Mine openings	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	100
Strip Mine	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (area)	96
Quarry	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	88
Open Pit Mine	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (area)	80
Borrow Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	72
Tailings - Undifferentiated	Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob	USGS topo symbol (area)	69
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments	Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	51
P3 Haul Road	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	47
Tailings - Pond	Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob	USGS topo symbol (area)	45
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	42
Disturbed Surface - Pit	Mines and surface workings	USGS topo symbol (area)	41
P3 Other	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	41
P3 Bench	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	37
P3 Spoil Area	Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	31
P2 Vertical Openings	Mine openings	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	29
P2 Dangerous Highwalls	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	28
Sand Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (area)	28
P3 Pits	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	26
Sand Pit	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	26
Quarry - Pumice	Quarries, gravel and borrow pits	USGS topo symbol (point)	25
P1 Subsidence	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	22
P3 Mine Opening	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	22
Trench	Prospect pits and trenches	USGS topo symbol (area)	20
P1 Dangerous Highwalls	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	19
P2 Subsidence	Other reclamation problems	OSMRE e-AMLIS problem	17

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, and the map does not say which. An OSMRE row is a problem the abandoned mine land program tracks, not a mine, and several problems make one problem area (PAD), which is the unit a state program counts and reports; the public extract can also hold more problem areas than a state's live inventory, because areas since merged or ruled ineligible stay in the published file, so a state figure that differs from this one is not a contradiction. An MSHA mine is a registered operation whose operator reported abandonment, a record that starts in the 1970s; that is a regulatory status rather than a physical one, and it also holds operations merely between jobs, portable crushers above all, which is why over a thousand mines carrying it have been inspected in the last two years. The three overlap and are never added together. Counties are assigned from each feature's coordinates against the Census 2023 county boundaries. The full method and every source are on the national page.

Sources

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.