Mining Incidents
Abandoned mine inventory

Abandoned mines in Uvalde County, Texas

Uvalde County, Texas has 95 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1949–1974, including 1 mine openings (shafts, adits and air shafts); 13 of the features carry a name on the map. MSHA's register carries 15 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Uvalde 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)
95
Mine openings
1
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
15
13 features carry a name0 prospect pits22 quadrangle maps, published 1949–1974 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
    1 1.1%
  2. Mines and surface workings
    labelled mines, open pits, strip mines, placer and hydraulic workings
    7 7.4%
  3. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    82 86.3%
  4. Dumps, tailings, spoil and gob
    what mining left above ground
    5 5.3%
Named features on the maps13 named · from the USGS compilation
Name on map Feature
Asphalt Mine Open Pit Mine
Asphalt Mine Open Pit Mine
Asphalt Mine Open Pit Mine
Asphalt Mine Open Pit Mine
Asphalt Mine Open Pit Mine
Gato Quarry Quarry area
Smyth Quarry Mine Dump area
Smyth Quarry Mine Dump area
Smyth Quarry Mine Dump area
Smyth Quarry Quarry area
Whites Mine Mine Dump area
Whites Mine Mine Dump area
Whites Mine Open Pit Mine area

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 Abandoned15 on register
  1. 243 Telesmith Cone Crusher
    Surface metal/non-metal · Concrete Mobility · MSHA ID 4104986
    Abandoned
  2. 83 Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Cenizo Services Inc · MSHA ID 4105007
    Abandoned
  3. Amigos Ranch
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4104993
    Abandoned
  4. Ball Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4103696
    Abandoned
  5. Beau-Ty Materials Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Beau-Ty Materials · MSHA ID 4104970
    Abandoned
  6. Cline Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hanson Natural Resources Company · MSHA ID 4103216
    Abandoned
  7. Davenport Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · E E Hood & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4104705
    Abandoned
  8. Knippa Milling Facility
    Facility metal/non-metal · Coastal & Western Minerals · MSHA ID 4103092
    Abandoned
  9. Little Bear Aggregate
    Surface metal/non-metal · Little Bear Aggregate · MSHA ID 4104742
    Abandoned
  10. MOBILE CR #3
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4103910
    Abandoned
  11. MOBILE CRUSHER #4
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4104014
    Abandoned
  12. Plant 530B
    Surface metal/non-metal · Hamilton Pipeline,Inc., Aggregate Div. · MSHA ID 4104493
    Abandoned
  13. Roper Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · South Texas Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4104391
    Abandoned
  14. Smyth Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · R L White Company · MSHA ID 4100997
    Abandoned
  15. Uvalde Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · E E Hood & Sons Inc · MSHA ID 4103752
    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 51
Gravel Pit 25
Mine Dump 5
Open Pit Mine 5
Quarry 3
Quarry 2
Mine Shaft 1
Borrow Pit 1
Open Pit Mine or Quarry 1
Open Pit 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.