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Abandoned mines › Texas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Live Oak County, Texas

Live Oak County, Texas has 181 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1954–1985. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 19 problems in the county, 8 of them not yet reclaimed. 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 Live Oak 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)
181
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
8
MSHA mines marked abandoned
16
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits25 quadrangle maps, published 1954–1985 19 OSMRE problems, 11 reclaimed 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
    10 5.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    171 85.5%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 2.5%
  4. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    14 7.0%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems19 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Esse P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Esse P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Esse P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Esse P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Kopplin P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Kopplin P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Kopplin P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
Kopplin P3 Other Reclamation Pending
Mabel New-Superior P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Mabel New-Superior P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Mabel New-Superior P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Ryan P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Pending
Ryan P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Ryan P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Pending
Ryan P3 Other Reclamation Pending
Smith P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Smith P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Smith P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Smith P3 Other 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 Abandoned16 on register
  1. Barry Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bravo Construction Inc · MSHA ID 4103151
    Abandoned
  2. Bomer Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Construction Company · MSHA ID 4102882
    Abandoned
  3. Burns Ranch Uranium Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · United States Steel Corp · MSHA ID 4102745
    Abandoned
  4. Clay West Uranium Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Usx Corp/Tx Uranium Operation · MSHA ID 4102492
    Abandoned
  5. Felder Uranium Operation
    Surface metal/non-metal · Exxon Minerals Company · MSHA ID 4102733
    Abandoned
  6. Gravel Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Sunbelt Gravel · MSHA ID 4103088
    Abandoned
  7. JOHN MCNEESE
    Surface metal/non-metal · John Mc Neese · MSHA ID 4102517
    Abandoned
  8. Lamprecht Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Albuquerque Uranium Corp · MSHA ID 4102777
    Abandoned
  9. Mccowan Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Construction Company · MSHA ID 4102880
    Abandoned
  10. Mobel Crusher #2 Marek Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · E E Hood & Sons Construction Co Inc · MSHA ID 4103110
    Abandoned
  11. Mt Lucas
    Facility metal/non-metal · Everest Minerals Corp · MSHA ID 4103225
    Abandoned
  12. Nell Plant
    Facility metal/non-metal · Nufuels Corp · MSHA ID 4102811
    Abandoned
  13. Three Rivers Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Far South Mining LLC · MSHA ID 4104840
    Abandoned
  14. Three Rivers Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · U S Silica Company · MSHA ID 4102418
    Abandoned
  15. Westinghouse Electric Corp Uranium Resou
    Facility metal/non-metal · Westinghouse Electric Corp · MSHA ID 4102717
    Abandoned
  16. Whitsett Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Far South Mining LLC · MSHA ID 4104939
    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 85
Gravel Pit 40
Quarry 26
Disturbed Surface 9
Caliche Pit 6
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 6
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 5
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 5
Caliche Pit 5
P3 Other 5
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 4
Quarry 3
Strip 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.