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Abandoned mines › Texas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Ellis County, Texas

Ellis County, Texas has 205 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1959–1995, including 9 prospect pits. MSHA's register carries 18 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ellis 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)
205
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name9 prospect pits25 quadrangle maps, published 1959–1995 0 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    9 4.4%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    6 2.9%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    190 92.7%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned18 on register
  1. Construction Products Division
    Facility metal/non-metal · W R Grace & Company · MSHA ID 4102895
    Abandoned
  2. Ellis County Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · E W Hable & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4103084
    Abandoned
  3. ENNIS PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pappy'S Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4103787
    Abandoned
  4. Ennis Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Trinity Materials Inc · MSHA ID 4103455
    Abandoned
  5. ENNIS SAND PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Lattimore Materials Company Lp · MSHA ID 4103949
    Abandoned
  6. FERRIS NORTH PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Aggregates · MSHA ID 4104114
    Abandoned
  7. Ferris Pit & Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Sprint Sand & Gravel Company · MSHA ID 4103366
    Abandoned
  8. Ferris Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Henderson Clay Products Inc · MSHA ID 4101283
    Abandoned
  9. FERRIS PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Aggregates West Inc · MSHA ID 4103074
    Abandoned
  10. FERRIS SAND AND GRAVEL
    Surface metal/non-metal · Txi (A/K/A Texas Industries Inc) · MSHA ID 4102957
    Abandoned
  11. Gifford-Hill Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gifford-Hill Portland Cement Company · MSHA ID 4102933
    Abandoned
  12. MAB
    Surface metal/non-metal · MAB Excavation LLC · MSHA ID 4105737
    Abandoned
  13. Malloy Bridge Plant 1201
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arcosa Aggregates Texas, LLC · MSHA ID 4102946
    Abandoned
  14. Midlothian Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Txi (A/K/A Texas Industries Inc) · MSHA ID 4102934
    Abandoned
  15. Midlothian Quarry & Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Dal-Tex Cement Company · MSHA ID 4103138
    Abandoned
  16. Rockett Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · S & S Investment · MSHA ID 4103306
    Abandoned
  17. Stephens Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brown & Blakney Construction Co · MSHA ID 4102865
    Abandoned
  18. Waxahachie Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Concord Materials · MSHA ID 4103776
    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 74
Gravel Pit 59
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 36
Clay Pit 8
Prospect Pit 8
Quarry 8
Disturbed Surface - Pit 3
Disturbed Surface 2
Borrow Pit 2
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Quarry 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Borrow Pit 1
Prospect 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.