Puerto Rico Abandoned Mine Maps

Every office on this page was opened and checked on Oct. 22, 2026.

Puerto Rico has no coal, no abandoned mine land program and no state geological survey. Extraction of sand, gravel, stone and other crust materials is governed by Law 132 of 1968; the permits are filed through the Oficina de Gerencia de Permisos at permisos.pr.gov and the DRNA keeps the oversight. A hole that opens in the ground here is far more likely a karst sinkhole in limestone than a mine working, and the emergency call goes to 911 and the Negociado para el Manejo de Emergencias y Administracion de Desastres.

No guarantee

The mine information here is for general information only. Old mine records can be incomplete, outdated or wrong, and finding nothing here does not mean there is nothing there. Check with the mine map office named here before you rely on it, and have a qualified engineer look at any ground you are worried about. PublicRecordCenter.com assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions, or consequences arising from the use of this information.

DRNA Secretaria Auxiliar de Permisos, Endosos y Servicios Especializados is the state route in Puerto Rico. The Department of Natural and Environmental Resources office that handles permits and endorsements for work on the land, and the island's point of contact for records of extraction of sand, gravel and stone under Law 132 of 1968.

OSMRE National Mine Map Repository is the federal archive. It holds maps of more than 275,000 closed and abandoned mines, the images are not downloadable, and they are sent on request: search the repository by state, county, company or mine name, then ask for the sheet by its number through the map request form or at nmmr@osmre.gov.

A mine map is the only document that shows the rooms, the pillars and the depth of cover under a given piece of ground. A point on this map is a location, not a property line, and it says nothing about what lies under any particular house.

Puerto Rico runs no state mine subsidence insurance program. Cover, where an insurer offers it at all, is an endorsement on a homeowner policy, and a standard policy excludes earth movement, which is what mine subsidence is.

Ask your own insurer in writing whether the policy covers subsidence from mining, and keep the answer. Eight states run a program of their own: Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wyoming and Colorado.

The old survey maps hold 357 mapped mine features inside Puerto Rico, none of them underground. They were surveyed between 1941 and 1982. The commonest kinds are quarry, open pit mine or quarry and gravel pit.

The mine records hold 533 worked or prospected sites in Puerto Rico, 433 of them named, with 533 sites recorded as a past producer. The commodities most often named are stone, sand and gravel and copper.

How the counting was done: every point in both files was placed inside the Census TIGER 2024 county and place boundaries by its own coordinates, not by the county name written in the file, because that name is blank or wrong often enough to matter. A point that falls outside every boundary is counted in no county and no town.

What the counts are not: a count of mines under houses. A single opening can lead to workings that run for miles, and a working with no opening on a sheet is in no count at all. Only a mine map shows the rooms, and only the offices named above hold the maps.

No guarantee

The mine information here is for general information only. Old mine records can be incomplete, outdated or wrong, and finding nothing here does not mean there is nothing there. Check with the mine map office named here before you rely on it, and have a qualified engineer look at any ground you are worried about. PublicRecordCenter.com assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions, or consequences arising from the use of this information.