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Abandoned mines › Texas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Gillespie County, Texas

Gillespie County, Texas has 227 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1961–1982, including 9 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 22 prospect pits; 2 of the features carry a name on the map. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 4 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 29 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Gillespie 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)
227
Mine openings
9
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
29
2 features carry a name22 prospect pits20 quadrangle maps, published 1961–1982 4 OSMRE problems, 4 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
    11 4.8%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    22 9.5%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    4 1.7%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    192 83.1%
  5. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    2 0.9%
Named features on the maps2 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Cherry Mountain Mine Open Pit Mine area
Neyland Mine Mine Shaft

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 problems4 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Gillespie Mannix P1 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Gillespie Mannix P1 Subsidence Reclamation Completed
Gillespie Mannix P1 Vertical Openings Reclamation Completed
Gillespie Mannix P1 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 Abandoned29 on register
  1. 16 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Edmund Jenschke Inc · MSHA ID 4105341
    Abandoned
  2. Bodo Lane
    Surface metal/non-metal · GOCC Inc · MSHA ID 4105694
    Abandoned
  3. BOERNER PITS & PLANT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weirich Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 4101171
    Abandoned
  4. DBR Limestone
    Surface metal/non-metal · DBR Limestone LLC · MSHA ID 4104212
    Abandoned
  5. Doebbler Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Davis Stone Inc · MSHA ID 4103494
    Abandoned
  6. E.G. Masonary Stone
    Surface metal/non-metal · E.G. Masonary Stone · MSHA ID 4104357
    Abandoned
  7. Ellenbracht Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cantera Stone · MSHA ID 4104410
    Abandoned
  8. Fredericksburg Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Georgia-Pacific Gypsum LLC · MSHA ID 4100852
    Abandoned
  9. Fuhrmann Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allen Keller Company · MSHA ID 4103256
    Abandoned
  10. Granite Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wayne Melcer Construction · MSHA ID 4105339
    Abandoned
  11. Inertia Hawk 4048 04801106
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pioneer Resources · MSHA ID 4105763
    Abandoned
  12. Jenschke
    Surface metal/non-metal · Masters Construction · MSHA ID 4103866
    Abandoned
  13. Kelly Ranch
    Surface metal/non-metal · Ruby's Stone · MSHA ID 4104356
    Abandoned
  14. KELLY RANCH
    Surface metal/non-metal · Frank Arredondo & Son · MSHA ID 4104273
    Abandoned
  15. Kelly Ranch Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Garza Masonry Stone Inc · MSHA ID 4104208
    Abandoned
  16. MEYER PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Weirich Brothers Inc · MSHA ID 4104089
    Abandoned
  17. Palo Alto Creek Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gold Paving & Aggregate Inc · MSHA ID 4101089
    Abandoned
  18. Palo Alto Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · George Ready Mix Inc · MSHA ID 4103391
    Abandoned
  19. Pioneer Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allen Keller Company · MSHA ID 4103365
    Abandoned
  20. Portable Plant #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sand Mill Inc. · MSHA ID 4104547
    Abandoned
  21. Portable Plant No 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allen Keller Company LLC · MSHA ID 4104323
    Abandoned
  22. Radiant Red Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cold Spring Granite Company · MSHA ID 4101216
    Abandoned
  23. Ramirez Stone LLC
    Surface metal/non-metal · RG Texas Materials LLC · MSHA ID 4105815
    Abandoned
  24. Rogers Rental Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Allen Keller Company · MSHA ID 4105632
    Abandoned
  25. SUTHERLAND RANCH
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hill Country Stone · MSHA ID 4103677
    Abandoned
  26. Taylor Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Taylor Construction · MSHA ID 4104774
    Abandoned
  27. Treibs Quarry And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gold Paving & Aggregate Inc · MSHA ID 4102265
    Abandoned
  28. Triple H Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Garza Masonry Stone Inc · MSHA ID 4104207
    Abandoned
  29. Wayne Meier Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Maldonado Landscaping · MSHA ID 4104703
    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 146
Gravel Pit 24
Prospect Pit 22
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 16
Mine Shaft 9
Quarry 4
P1 Vertical Openings 2
Disturbed Surface 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Borrow Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Open Pit Mine 1
Quarry 1
P1 Dangerous Highwalls 1
P1 Subsidence 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.