Abandoned mines in Colfax County, New Mexico

1. Mine openings

   shafts, adits, air shafts, portals and vertical openings: the ways into underground workings
   127 29.5%
2. Prospect pits and trenches

   shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
   115 26.7%
3. Mines and surface workings

   labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
   42 9.7%
4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits

   construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
   72 16.7%
5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob

   what mining left above ground
   41 9.5%
6. Mills, tipples and facilities

   processing plants and hazardous structures
   6 1.4%
7. Other reclamation problems

   highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
   28 6.5%

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.

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.

1. Block Mine

   Underground coal · Anthony Paulick Owner · MSHA ID 2900198
   Abandoned 1971-06-29
2. Cimarron

   Surface metal/non-metal · Herzog Contracting Corp · MSHA ID 2901983
   Abandoned 1985-06-14
3. Cimarron Mine

   Facility coal · Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company · MSHA ID 2900224
   Abandoned 1997-10-20
4. Deer Canyon Pit

   Surface metal/non-metal · Kaiser Coal Corp Of York Canyon · MSHA ID 2901143
   Abandoned 1981-06-09
5. Franks #1

   Underground coal · Julius Seidel · MSHA ID 2900085
   Abandoned 1970-11-10
6. Luksich Mine

   Underground coal · Luksich & Sons Operators · MSHA ID 2900087
   Abandoned 1971-03-11
7. Portable Plant #1

   Surface metal/non-metal · Sangre de Cristo Gravel Products LLC · MSHA ID 2902341
   Abandoned 2007-07-06
8. Portable Screener #2

   Surface metal/non-metal · Red Hill Lava Products, Inc. · MSHA ID 2902516
   Abandoned 2023-08-09
9. Portable Unit #2

   Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Quarries Inc · MSHA ID 0504197
   Abandoned 2021-05-12
10. Potato Canyon Mine

    Underground coal · Kaiser Coal Corp Of York Canyon · MSHA ID 2901798
    Abandoned and Sealed 1986-03-03
11. R W Butt Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · R W Butt · MSHA ID 2902106
    Abandoned 2011-12-07
12. Saladon Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · Angel Fire Corp · MSHA ID 2901763
    Abandoned 1983-07-29
13. San Bar Materials

    Surface metal/non-metal · San Bar Materials LLC · MSHA ID 2902167
    Abandoned 2007-07-18
14. SCREEN PLANT #1

    Surface metal/non-metal · Bruces Gravel · MSHA ID 2902177
    Abandoned 2010-07-01
15. Screening Plant

    Surface metal/non-metal · W M Serazio Co. · MSHA ID 2902189
    Abandoned 2019-10-07
16. Sisneros Mine

    Underground coal · Sisneros Brothers · MSHA ID 2900086
    Abandoned 1971-03-11
17. Springer Pit

    Surface metal/non-metal · B T U Block & Concrete Inc · MSHA ID 2902115
    Abandoned 1995-09-01
18. York Canyon Surface Mine

    Surface coal · Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company · MSHA ID 2900845
    Abandoned 2005-08-31
19. York Canyon-Underground Mine

    Facility coal · Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Company · MSHA ID 2900095
    Abandoned 1996-12-19

Status and date are as reported to MSHA by the operator. Each mine's own page carries its accident, citation and inspection record.

• Grant County 5,221
• Hidalgo County 1,747
• Sierra County 1,497
• Socorro County 1,259
• Luna County 1,164
• Lea County 890
• Lincoln County 803
• Sandoval County 650
• McKinley County 621
• Eddy County 591
• Santa Fe County 566
• Doña Ana County 482

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.