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Abandoned mines › New Mexico
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Cibola County, New Mexico

Cibola County, New Mexico has 282 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1951–1995, including 41 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 142 prospect pits; 38 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 2 problems in the county, 1 of them not yet reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 20 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Cibola 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)
282
Mine openings
41
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
1
MSHA mines marked abandoned
20
38 features carry a name142 prospect pits29 quadrangle maps, published 1951–1995 2 OSMRE problems, 1 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
    43 15.1%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    142 50.0%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    40 14.1%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    49 17.3%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    10 3.5%
Named features on the maps38 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Mine Dump area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Mine Dump area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Mine Dump area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Anaconda Section Nine Mine Strip Mine area
Jackpile Mine Open Pit Mine area
Mirabal Mine Adit
San Mateo Mine Mine Shaft
South Laguna Mines Open Pit Mine
St Anthony Mine Mine Shaft
Woodrow Mine Mine Shaft
Zia Mine Mine Shaft
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area
Zia Mine Trench area

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
Paxton 96 P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Pending
Zuni P2 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 Abandoned20 on register
  1. Bluewater Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Anaconda Minerals Company · MSHA ID 2900772
    Abandoned
  2. Dan Ramsey Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dan Ramsey Inc · MSHA ID 2901929
    Abandoned
  3. El Morro
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Company · MSHA ID 2901935
    Abandoned
  4. Gibbons & Reed Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gibbons & Reed Company · MSHA ID 2902125
    Abandoned
  5. Haskani
    Surface metal/non-metal · Denali · MSHA ID 2902240
    Abandoned
  6. L J Single Cone
    Surface metal/non-metal · Nielsons Inc · MSHA ID 2901736
    Abandoned
  7. L-Bar Uranium Operations
    Underground metal/non-metal · Sohio Western Mining Company · MSHA ID 2900565
    Abandoned
  8. Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Homestake Mining Company · MSHA ID 2900775
    Abandoned
  9. Mt Taylor Mine
    Underground metal/non-metal · Rio Grande Resources Corp · MSHA ID 2901375
    Abandoned
  10. PIT NO. 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Marinelli Construction Inc · MSHA ID 2901467
    Abandoned
  11. Ray 4
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Stone · MSHA ID 2902281
    Abandoned
  12. Ray 6
    Surface metal/non-metal · International Stone · MSHA ID 2902283
    Abandoned
  13. Rinconada Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · James Hamilton Construction Company · MSHA ID 2901963
    Abandoned
  14. Rinconada Pit #83-7-5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Riverside General Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2901969
    Abandoned
  15. Roundy Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Farris Mines Inc · MSHA ID 2901431
    Abandoned
  16. Sundt Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · M M Sundt Construction Company · MSHA ID 2901936
    Abandoned
  17. US GYPSUM CO
    Surface metal/non-metal · United States Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 2900251
    Abandoned
  18. US GYPSUM CO
    Facility metal/non-metal · United States Gypsum Company · MSHA ID 2901107
    Abandoned
  19. Westar
    Surface metal/non-metal · Westar Concrete & Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 2901331
    Abandoned
  20. York Ranch Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wild Horse Development Corp · MSHA ID 2902339
    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
Prospect Pit 122
Adit 21
Trench 20
Mine Shaft 20
Gravel Pit 12
Disturbed Surface 10
Open Pit Mine 10
Open Pit Mine 10
Strip Mine 10
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 9
Quarry 9
Gravel Pit 8
Tailings - Undifferentiated 5
Borrow Pit 5
Cinder Pit 4
Mine Dump 3
Tailings - Pond 2
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
P1 Vertical Openings 1
P2 Vertical Openings 1
Quarry 1
Other counties in New MexicoAll 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.