Location Certificates, Claim Jumper Options

[Gold Hill Miner]

I have a mess. BLM did a meets and bounds survey in my area and changed my property lines after 150 years. I have been on the same claims for over 26 years. In the last year I have uncovered every original property marker according to my deeds from the 1800's. Someone intentionally obliterated all of them. Now that same person is trying to prevent me from getting any corrections with violence. BLM recorded no evidence of almost all of them in their survey in 2003. They reset markers. After a year and a half of trying to figure out what happened I realized I just had to prove my shafts and tunnels to the mines have not moved. I own 3 seperate pieces of property. On 2 of those properties I own the mineral rights and the surface rights. On one I own all the mineral rights and only some of the surface rights. If I fix the one with the partial surface rights all the rest will fall back into place. My question is, do I just need the location certificates to get BLM to make the correction. Surveyors say" BLM changed your property lines now live with it." No one will pay any attention to the mine shafts and tunnels which I do not understand. The claim jumping started around 2001. I would not have noticed but the whole area burned in the Fourmile Fire including my home and all my land. When I came home to rebuild my lines had moved. In Boulder County you can encroach on someones land for 18 years and then it is yours. The fire happened only 10 years after the encroachment started. The claim jumper figured I would never know. I still have time to fix this. Boulder County had the location certificates and everything measures correctly according to the certificates and plats according to my property description. Do I need new ones? BLM has now given the claim jumper our property without verifying the shafts, tunnels and location certificates. The claim jumper had 4 structures in trespass on one claim and moved his property lines so he would not have to purchase his trespass issues. No one at Boulder county will help and BLM wants me to file a protest against their 2003 meets and bounds survey. BLM also pinned my horseshoe pit pins almost 100' away from the real line. Help! Even lawyers want me to file quiet title actions in federal court. BLM says they have no money to fix anything and I am just getting a run around.

[Gene Kooper]

What is the easiest, most simple way to show BLM? Besides a 5 minute jaw dropping visit to said claim. They also won't look at GPS coordinates that match all county records, the location certificate, or the mineral survey. This claim was amended in 1902. The first Location was done in 1895. I found the pre amended location cert., not the 1895 mineral survey. I was hoping BLM re-pinned the claim in the pre amended position because there may have been an old marker still in place. I am waiting for the original patent package from WA.

Thanks for your reply. I have the burden of proof. Unfortunately everyone makes mistakes occasionally. A whole mountainside of mine claims with matching location certificates (legal binding documents) do not just move down a hill 75-100', off their shafts and tunnels. BLM actually recorded 99% of the the claim lines in question not monumented, re- monumented and forgot to move the shafts and tunnels with the new lines. I have located all the original lines while someone follows after me and does further damage to them. Fortunately no one can move the shafts and tunnels. Since several claims have been moved re monumented, some shafts and tunnels have been moved onto BLM vacant pockets. This creates a whole new problem with leasing for mining. BLM had several vacant pockets of land between the claims. They definitely eliminated several pockets by re monumenting lines, sold some that were actually privately owned and disregarded a centerline survey. i have a surveyor that did a point certification for my most westerly line on one claim. I found where BLM made the mistake. They pinned a corner #4 at a corner #1. This brought on a whole ripple effect with several claims. Now the surveyor is platting the correct location and the new BLM monumented location for the burden of proof. Because of the fire, the correct lines are clearly visible from a higher viewpoint. So are the shafts and tunnels.

When a claimant makes the discovery of a locatable mineral, a location certificate must then be recorded at the county. It describes that portion of the Public Lands that a miner claims the possessory right to the mineral estate. The claimant retained the mining rights as long as they met all of the requirements in the Federal and State mining laws and regulations thereunder and made a minimum of $100 in mining improvements annually.

Once upon a time, a mining claimant wishing a patent to mineral lands would begin the process by submitting an, "Application for Survey" to the Surveyor's General office. The application would include a certified copy of the location certificate. In many cases the original location certificate had to be amended to correct errors and/or conform to the regulations in force at the time it was located.

After a survey order was issued, a mineral surveyor would conduct the survey. You probably found a certified copy of the location certificate in the patent package from WA. After a mining claim has gone to patent, the location certificate is little more than a historical curiosity. The patent, approved plat and official field notes are the "legal binding documents" for patented claims. I point that out that because the plat and official field notes include ties to all of the mining improvements that were made to the claim at the time of the "patent" survey. A minimum of $500 in mining improvements were required before the claim could be patented.

Since the locations of the mining improvements are tied to one or more corners of your claim, their positions can be used to reestablish the original lines of the mineral survey. Both private surveyors and BLM Cadastral surveyors use mining improvements to set lost corners. For example, the discovery shaft/cut/adit is a natural monument. Natural monuments usually hold over artificial monuments because they are regarded legally as being more certain. Using your example that shafts don't move, their position is more certain than a conflicting stone monument, esp. if it has no original accessories.

One of the techniques that I employ before doing a mineral survey retracement is to draw up the claim boundaries and its mining improvements. I then "locate" the claim on an aerial photograph, fine tuning its position by aligning the mining improvements with disturbed areas on the photo. I'm not saying that you and your surveyor should necessarily do the same. However, your burden of proof to overturn the BLM's 2003 dependent resurvey is to show either fraud or gross error. Meeting that burden won't be easy. You may need to plot up several mineral surveys near your claim(s) to show the BLM that the pattern of mining improvements is unique. The BLM may disagree with your conclusions. If so, your next option would be to appeal to the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA).