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

Abandoned mines in Ward County, Texas

Ward County, Texas has 151 mine and prospect features on USGS topographic maps published 1961–1981. MSHA's register carries 13 mines in the county with status Abandoned or Abandoned and Sealed.

Every mine and prospect feature the USGS digitized from historical topographic maps covering Ward 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)
151
Mine openings
0
OSMRE problems unreclaimed
0
MSHA mines marked abandoned
13
0 features carry a name0 prospect pits16 quadrangle maps, published 1961–1981 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
    3 2.0%
  2. Quarries, gravel and borrow pits
    construction-material and industrial-mineral extraction
    148 98.0%
MSHA-registered mines with status Abandoned13 on register
  1. Barstow Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jones Bros Dirt & Paving Contractors Inc · MSHA ID 4103258
    Abandoned
  2. Barstow Pit And Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Delaware Basin Aggregates Inc · MSHA ID 4101329
    Abandoned
  3. Burkholder North Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Sage Services · MSHA ID 4105464
    Abandoned
  4. Burkholder South Quarry
    Surface metal/non-metal · Blue Sage Services · MSHA ID 4105463
    Abandoned
  5. Eagle Plant #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · West Texas Aggregates LLC · MSHA ID 4105352
    Abandoned
  6. Grand Falls #1
    Surface metal/non-metal · Triple Crown Silica LLC · MSHA ID 4105721
    Abandoned
  7. Mc Daniel Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Price Construction · MSHA ID 4102923
    Abandoned
  8. PLANT #2
    Surface metal/non-metal · Phipps Sand & Gravel Company Inc · MSHA ID 4103954
    Abandoned
  9. Price Pit
    Surface metal/non-metal · Jagoe-Public Company · MSHA ID 4102877
    Abandoned
  10. River Portable Plant
    Surface metal/non-metal · Permian Basin Materials · MSHA ID 4105374
    Abandoned
  11. Sealy Smith
    Surface metal/non-metal · Black Mountain Sand Permian, LLC. · MSHA ID 4105388
    Abandoned
  12. Tubb Quarry Plt 2 Sand and Gravel
    Surface metal/non-metal · Tubb Quarry, LLC · MSHA ID 4105204
    Abandoned
  13. WUUD
    Surface metal/non-metal · Permian Basin Materials LLC · MSHA ID 4105194
    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 83
Gravel Pit 60
Disturbed Surface - Pit 3
Quarry 2
Quarry 1
Gravel/Borrow Pit - Undifferentiated 1
Sand Pit 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.