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Abandoned mines › New Mexico
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Union County, New Mexico

Union County, New Mexico has 112 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1966–1977, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 7 prospect pits. MSHA's register carries 16 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Union 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)
112
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
0 features carry a name7 prospect pits35 quadrangle maps, published 1966–1977 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
    1 0.9%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    7 6.2%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    1 0.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    103 92.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned16 on register
  1. BEHNE CONST CO INC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Behne Construction Company Inc · MSHA ID 2902196
    Abandoned
  2. CARRIZO PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Carrizo Sand & Gravel, LLC · MSHA ID 2902218
    Abandoned
  3. Crusher # 8
    Surface metal/non-metal · Southway Construction Co Inc of Alamosa · MSHA ID 0504781
    Abandoned
  4. Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · J R Hale Contracting Company Inc · MSHA ID 2901679
    Abandoned
  5. J R PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · J R Trucking · MSHA ID 2902104
    Abandoned
  6. Long Ranch Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dumas Ventures, LLC · MSHA ID 2902419
    Abandoned
  7. Malpie Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Colorado Lava Inc · MSHA ID 2902360
    Abandoned
  8. Portable #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · H & H Brosious LLC · MSHA ID 2902362
    Abandoned
  9. Portable Crusher #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Volcanic Stone Co. · MSHA ID 4104962
    Abandoned
  10. Portable Crusher #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Kiewit Western Company · MSHA ID 2901614
    Abandoned
  11. R. Burrell Day Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Twin Mountain Const. Co. · MSHA ID 2902327
    Abandoned
  12. Rinker Materials Des Moines Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rinker Materials Western Inc. · MSHA ID 2900194
    Abandoned
  13. Rinker Materials Malpie Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rinker Materials Western Inc. · MSHA ID 2902205
    Abandoned
  14. Seneca Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Six-M Concrete Company · MSHA ID 2900616
    Abandoned
  15. Versa-Tech Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Versa-Tech Industries Inc · MSHA ID 2902198
    Abandoned
  16. Versatile Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Versatile Construction Company · MSHA ID 2902210
    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 69
Gravel Pit 26
Prospect Pit 7
Borrow Pit 3
Borrow Pit 2
Strip Mine 1
Sand Pit 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Quarry 1
Adit 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.