Mining Incidents
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Maverick County, Texas

Maverick County, Texas has 74 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1940–1983, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts) and 3 prospect pits. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 2 problems in the county, all of them reclaimed. MSHA's register carries 10 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Maverick 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)
74
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
10
0 features carry a name3 prospect pits21 quadrangle maps, published 1940–1983 2 OSMRE problems, 2 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
    2 2.6%
  2. Prospect pits and trenches
    shallow exploration diggings that never became a mine
    3 3.9%
  3. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    6 7.9%
  4. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    64 84.2%
  5. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    1 1.3%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems2 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Olmos P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Olmos 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 Abandoned10 on register
  1. AGUILA GRAVEL PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jose De Los Santos · MSHA ID 4104115
    Abandoned
  2. Eagle Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · Eagle Materials · MSHA ID 4104816
    Abandoned
  3. Eagle Pass Mine
    Surface coal · Dos Republicas Coal · MSHA ID 4103739
    Abandoned
  4. Farming Hydrasource Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Farming Hydrasource, LLC · MSHA ID 4105580
    Abandoned
  5. King Construction
    Surface metal/non-metal · King Construction · MSHA ID 4104788
    Abandoned
  6. Oscar's Mine
    Surface metal/non-metal · Bega Hauling · MSHA ID 4104678
    Abandoned
  7. Portable Crusher LU 150
    Surface metal/non-metal · Laredo Paving Inc · MSHA ID 4104028
    Abandoned
  8. RITCHIE PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jose De Los Santos · MSHA ID 4103596
    Abandoned
  9. Sesa Fluorspar Incorporated
    Facility metal/non-metal · Sesa Fluorspar Inc · MSHA ID 4101345
    Abandoned
  10. SQMC 1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Select Quality Materials and Concrete · MSHA ID 4105596
    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 47
Gravel Pit 17
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 6
Prospect Pit 3
Adit 1
P1 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 1
P1 Vertical Openings 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.