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Abandoned Mines Program--Orogrande Site, New Mexico
Site of March, 2000, fatality. Note collapsed wire frame. Shaft to be
permanently closed.
The Orogrande Mining District (Jarilla Mountains) is within easy
driving distance of El Paso, Texas, and of Alamogordo, New Mexico, both
in southwest United States. The area is used extensively by the
public for rockhounding, recreational mining, hiking, and exploring. It is
the highest density physical hazard BLM-administered area in the State.
BLM inventoried 356 sites involving 1025 features in 1996.
On March 4, 2000, an Alamogordo senior high school student fell to his
death in an abandoned 200-foot deep mine shaft on a patented mining claim
(private land). A contract has been awarded in the Orogrande Mining
District to remediate several hundred physical hazard features, including
many on BLM-managed land. The contract area has been adjusted to include
the area of the fatality.
The BLM-State Assistance Agreement supplements this contract by providing
for the temporary safeguarding (fencing, netting, signing) of additional
features that are the most accessible on BLM land and their permanent
closure under a later contract.
