Mining Incidents
Search Operators Mines Alerts Research Controllers Fatalgrams About
Countries
Peru Chile
English Español
Abandoned mines › Texas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Hudspeth County, Texas

Hudspeth County, Texas has 301 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1942–1984, including 40 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 128 prospect pits; 13 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 22 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Hudspeth 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)
301
Mine openings
40
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
22
13 features carry a name128 prospect pits53 quadrangle maps, published 1942–1984 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
    40 13.3%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    128 42.5%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    7 2.3%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    126 41.9%
Named features on the maps13 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Black Diamond Mine Mine Shaft
Blackshaft Mine Mine Shaft
Bonanza Mine Mine Shaft
Bonanza Mine Open Pit Mine
Hackberry Mine Open Pit Mine
Mohawk Mine Mine Shaft
Old Padre Mine Mine
Old Padre Mine Mine Shaft
Plata Verde Mine Mine Shaft
Plata Verde Mines Mine Shaft
Purple Sage Mine Mine Shaft
Sancho Panza Mine Adit
St Elmo 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.

MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned22 on register
  1. Allamore Mill
    Facility metal/non-metal · Dal-Tile Corporation · MSHA ID 4100869
    Abandoned
  2. Baucca Sand Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · El Paso Sand Products Inc · MSHA ID 4103285
    Abandoned
  3. Bonanza Mine & Mill
    Underground metal/non-metal · Bonanza Mining Venture Ltd · MSHA ID 4102782
    Abandoned
  4. C L RANCH
    Surface metal/non-metal · C L Ranch · MSHA ID 4103943
    Abandoned
  5. Chaparral Sand & Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Chaparral Sand & Gravel · MSHA ID 4104022
    Abandoned
  6. Cyprus Beryllium Corporation
    Underground metal/non-metal · Cyprus Beryllium Corp · MSHA ID 4103454
    Abandoned
  7. Desert Rock Van Horn River Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Desert Rock Co. · MSHA ID 4104370
    Abandoned
  8. Eagle Flats
    Surface metal/non-metal · Milwhite Inc · MSHA ID 4102844
    Abandoned
  9. Finley Gypsum Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Pelton Mining & Exploration · MSHA ID 4103261
    Abandoned
  10. Hilltop Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · El Paso Sand Products Inc · MSHA ID 4103282
    Abandoned
  11. Hudspeth County Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Gilvin-Terrill Ltd · MSHA ID 4101490
    Abandoned
  12. MCNARY PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · CEMEX Construction Materials LP · MSHA ID 4104135
    Abandoned
  13. MOLLY BOOTH
    Surface metal/non-metal · CEMEX Construction Materials LP · MSHA ID 4104307
    Abandoned
  14. Pegson Track Jaw Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Desert Rock Co. · MSHA ID 4105399
    Abandoned
  15. Plata Verde
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Barite · MSHA ID 4103078
    Abandoned
  16. SIERRA BLANCA
    Surface metal/non-metal · Martin Marietta Aggregates · MSHA ID 4104015
    Abandoned
  17. Suzorite Mineral Products-Pits
    Surface metal/non-metal · Suzorite Mineral Products · MSHA ID 4103195
    Abandoned
  18. Texas Mines
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cyprus Industrial Minerals Company · MSHA ID 4101299
    Abandoned
  19. Texrox Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Texrox LLC · MSHA ID 4105566
    Abandoned
  20. Van Horn Pit & Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Capitol Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4100024
    Abandoned
  21. VanHorn
    Surface metal/non-metal · Unimin Texas Company L P · MSHA ID 4101295
    Abandoned
  22. Windmill Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · DRS Rock Materials, LLC · MSHA ID 4104653
    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
Prospect Pit 128
Gravel Pit 50
Gravel Pit 33
Mine Shaft 30
Quarry 19
Adit 10
Quarry 8
Borrow Pit 8
Borrow Pit 8
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 3
Open Pit Mine 3
Mine 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.