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Abandoned mines › Texas
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Milam County, Texas

Milam County, Texas has 162 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1961–1989. OSMRE's abandoned mine land inventory lists 14 problems in the county, 6 of them not yet reclaimed. 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 Milam 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)
162
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
6
MSHA mines marked abandoned
18
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1961–1989 14 OSMRE problems, 8 reclaimed 1 MSHA mines abandoned and sealed
What the features are
  1. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    16 9.1%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    145 82.4%
  3. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 2.8%
  4. Other reclamation problems
    highwalls, subsidence, polluted or clogged water, fires, slides and gases in OSMRE's inventory
    10 5.7%
OSMRE abandoned mine land problems14 on inventory
Problem area Problem Status
Alcoa P2 Dangerous Highwalls Reclamation Completed
Alcoa P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Alcoa P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Alcoa P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Alcoa P3 Spoil Area Reclamation Completed
Alcoa F Area P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Completed
Alcoa F Area P2 Hazardous Water Bodies Reclamation Completed
Alcoa F Area P3 Other Reclamation Completed
Milam Insley P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Milam Rockdale 1 P1 Subsidence In Reclamation
Milam Rockdale 1 P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments Reclamation Pending
Milam Rockdale 1 P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
Milano - Golden P2 Subsidence Reclamation Pending
TX - Milam Rockdale 2 P1 Subsidence Reclamation Pending

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 Abandoned18 on register
  1. B S & G Pit #5
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyd Sand & Gravel Ltd · MSHA ID 4104789
    Abandoned
  2. Backwoods Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyd Sand & Gravel Ltd · MSHA ID 4104081
    Abandoned
  3. Blockhouse
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cornerstone Materials · MSHA ID 4104352
    Abandoned
  4. Brazos Ridge Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brazos Ridge Materials · MSHA ID 4104791
    Abandoned
  5. Cameron 1336 (2)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arcosa Aggregates, Inc · MSHA ID 4104551
    Abandoned
  6. Cameron 1336 (3)
    Surface metal/non-metal · Arcosa Aggregates, Inc · MSHA ID 4105234
    Abandoned
  7. Cobb Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Boyd Sand & Gravel Ltd · MSHA ID 4104526
    Abandoned
  8. Gause Materials Company
    Surface metal/non-metal · Smith-Bedrich-Prater Inc · MSHA ID 4103182
    Abandoned
  9. Little River Gravel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Little River Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 4103214
    Abandoned
  10. Little River Materials
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mine Service LTD · MSHA ID 4104353
    Abandoned
  11. MAYSFIELD PIT
    Surface metal/non-metal · Trinity Materials Inc · MSHA ID 4103771
    Abandoned
  12. Milam Mine
    Surface coal · Shell Oil Company · MSHA ID 4102812
    Abandoned and Sealed
  13. Mine Service Pit #424
    Surface metal/non-metal · Mine Service Inc. · MSHA ID 4104507
    Abandoned
  14. Palasota
    Surface metal/non-metal · B.V.S Construction, Inc. · MSHA ID 4104570
    Abandoned
  15. PERRIN
    Surface metal/non-metal · Brazos Valley Sand & Gravel Inc · MSHA ID 4103938
    Abandoned
  16. Pettibone
    Surface metal/non-metal · Texcon Materials LTD · MSHA ID 4104143
    Abandoned
  17. Sandow Mine
    Surface coal · Alcoa Inc · MSHA ID 4100356
    Abandoned
  18. Wampum Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Wampum Gravel · MSHA ID 4104378
    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 66
Gravel Pit 62
Open Pit Mine 8
Quarry 6
Sand Pit 4
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 4
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 4
P2 Dangerous Piles & Embankments 3
P2 Subsidence 3
Disturbed Surface 3
P2 Hazardous Water Bodies 2
P1 Subsidence 2
Sand Pit 2
P3 Other 2
Quarry 1
P3 Spoil Area 1
P2 Dangerous Highwalls 1
Strip Mine 1
Mine Dump 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.