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Abandoned mines › Texas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Brazoria County, Texas

Brazoria County, Texas has 33 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1963–1982. MSHA's register carries 26 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Brazoria 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)
33
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
26
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1963–1982 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
    11 33.3%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    22 66.7%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned26 on register
  1. Alvin Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · W R Flora & Sons · MSHA ID 4102309
    Abandoned
  2. Bee Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bee Sand Company · MSHA ID 4103526
    Abandoned
  3. BLACKWELL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blackwell Fill & Sand Inc · MSHA ID 4103275
    Abandoned
  4. Brazosport Trucking Company Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brazosport Trucking Company Inc · MSHA ID 4102328
    Abandoned
  5. C & O Sand & Equipment Sales Co
    Surface metal/non-metal · C & O Sand & Equipment Sales Inc · MSHA ID 4103176
    Abandoned
  6. D D S Materials Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dds Materials Inc · MSHA ID 4103528
    Abandoned
  7. Damon Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · V H W Inc · MSHA ID 4102522
    Abandoned
  8. DELEON SAND PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · De Leon Sand Pit · MSHA ID 4104070
    Abandoned
  9. DIXIE SAND PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Dixie Sand Pit L P · MSHA ID 4104244
    Abandoned
  10. Fuqua Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Glenn Fuqua Inc · MSHA ID 4103517
    Abandoned
  11. Gunnels Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gunnels Sand Company · MSHA ID 4102327
    Abandoned
  12. Jdb Services Incorporated
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jdb Services Inc · MSHA ID 4103419
    Abandoned
  13. JDB SERVICES PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jdb Services Inc · MSHA ID 4103732
    Abandoned
  14. Manvel Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Stabilized Materials Company · MSHA ID 4103175
    Abandoned
  15. Manvel Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Manvel Sand Pit · MSHA ID 4103174
    Abandoned
  16. Manvel Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Manvel Sand Pit · MSHA ID 4103505
    Abandoned
  17. Manvel Sand Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Manvel Sand Company · MSHA ID 4103332
    Abandoned
  18. Miller Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Miller Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 4102889
    Abandoned
  19. Moller Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Farr Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 4102890
    Abandoned
  20. Pearland Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Rsh Trucking · MSHA ID 4103593
    Abandoned
  21. Pit #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mike Sorrell Trucking & Material Inc · MSHA ID 4102326
    Abandoned
  22. PIT #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · B & W Sand & Material · MSHA ID 4104032
    Abandoned
  23. Sandobar Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sandobar Corp · MSHA ID 4103506
    Abandoned
  24. Shelton Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jack Sheldon Excavating & Trucking Company · MSHA ID 4102344
    Abandoned
  25. Vernor Material Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Vernor Material & Equipment Company Inc · MSHA ID 4103417
    Abandoned
  26. WESSON SAND CO INC
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wesson Sand Company Inc · MSHA ID 4104122
    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
Disturbed Surface 11
Sand Pit 9
Gravel Pit 6
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 3
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Borrow Pit 1
Gravel Pit 1
Borrow Pit 1
Other counties in TexasAll 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.