Mining Laws and Regulations from a Land Surveyor's Perspective Options

[Gene Kooper]

I am a land surveyor that specializes in mineral survey retracements and, when necessary dependent resurveys. By that, I mean that I retrace the original boundaries of U.S. mineral surveys and when corners have been obliterated or destroyed I will reset the corners. A mineral survey is originally surveyed by a U.S. [Deputy] Mineral Surveyor. In addition to abiding by the instructions issued to mineral surveyors by the General Land Office or BLM, the mineral surveyor was required to know and understand the federal mining laws, their amendments, promulgated regulations, state mining laws and local mining customs before beginning the mineral survey.

Since my job as a retracement surveyor is to follow in the footsteps of the original surveyor I must know and understand what the mineral surveyor was charged with knowing. As such, over the years I have also become an amateur historian of the evolution of mining laws and regulations thereunder. I thought this forum would be a good place to post some of my research over the years. My perspective is different from most/all on this forum. I start from the beginning and note how the mining laws have evolved to the present while you folks are focused on how to procure and protect your possessory right to the locatable minerals on the Public Lands. IMHO if someone wants to know why the laws and regulations are what they are, it is informative to see how they came about and the numerous changes made up to the present time.

A CAVEAT: My primary objective is to understand the mining laws, regulations, instructions, DOI Land Decisions, etc. issued since 1866 as they apply to the boundaries of patented mining claims. I am not a prospector and have only staked mining claims for my clients. However, I do photograph and collect stones (mineral survey corners). My avatar is a porphyry stone that marks Cor. No. 1 of the Mother Lode (Sur. No. 204), Cor. No. 1 of the Mater Lode (Sur. No. 15889) and Cor. No. 4 of the Towne Lode (Sur. No. 17327) at the London Mine in Mosquito Gulch (American Flats is in the background).

So with that disclaimer stated, I thought I would start with a reference list I compiled as a handout for my mineral survey retracement workshops, which is attached to this post. In the reference list is, "Mineral Survey Procedures Guide, 1980, John V. Meldrum, U.S. Bureau of Land Management." The guide was issued to all U.S. Mineral Surveyors upon receiving their first appointment as a mineral surveyor. The next post will begin with a discussion of Chapter I Mining Laws, which includes the federal mining laws, their amendments and state mining laws.

I believe the last two references will be of interest to several here (if you don't already have them as references). They are in my opinion good references for locating and staking mining claims.

• Digest of Mining Claim Laws, Robert G. Pruitt, Jr., Fifth Edition, 1996; and
• Mineral Law, Terry Maley, Sixth Edition, 1996, Mineral Land Publications.

Edit: Fixed some spelling and grammar errors.

[Gene Kooper]

Mining Laws and Placer Claims

I'd like to turn the discussion to placer claims, along with my opinion that staking them is not a simple process under the Federal and Colorado statutes and regulations.

Placer claims were added to the mining laws by the Act of July 9, 1870 and incorporated with lode claims in the Act of May 10, 1872. The basic rule for the staking of placer claims is that they should be compact in form and conform to "legal subdivisions" where practicable. The mining laws permitted legal subdivisions as small as 10 acres, so a 20 acre placer claims would consist of two 10-acre "square" parcels. For example, a description for a placer claim defined by aliquot parts¹ would be the NE¼ of the SW¼ of the SE¼ and the NW¼ of the SW¼ of the SE¼ of a section. Note that the two 10-acre tracts have to be contiguous to each other (i.e. share a common line). The two 10-acre tracts are not considered to be contiguous if they only touch at a point (e.g. NE¼ of the SW¼ of the SE¼ and the SW¼ of the SW¼ of the SE¼).

In cases where the township had not yet been subdivided, the term "legal subdivision" meant that the courses should be cardinal directions (i.e. east, west, north and south) and the distances were usually multiples of 660 feet. For example, the dimensions of a 20 acre placer claim would be 660 x 1320 feet. Here is a link to a placer claim that was surveyed in 1872. The township wasn't subdivided until 1883.

This rule was not always observed, esp. in narrow canyons and gulches. Placer claims that did not conform to the rectangular survey system of township and section lines were often referred to as gulch placers. Here is my all-time favorite, the Cash Creek Placer south of Leadville, CO. As can be seen from all of the red ink, folks were having a bear of a time figuring out its dimensions. I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with the hydraulic mining activities.

One thing to add is that a placer claim location can be anywhere from 20 acres to 160 acres. For acreages above 20 acres an association of claimants is required, one for each 20-acre portion. An association of 8 people can hold a placer claim of up to 160 acres. For better or worse, the BLM changed the rules regarding maintenance fees for association placers. They now charge $155 for each 20 acres. In a prior post I attached a copy of the Colorado mining regulations. There are two things of note with regard to Colorado's laws and regulations as they pertain to placer claims. The first is the requirement to set a substantial post at every angle point of a placer claim. The other restricts the acreage to 20 acres for a single claimant. Remember, that state laws and regulations can be more restrictive than federal laws and regulations, they just can't allow more than what the federal mining laws allow. For example, Colorado law cannot allow placer claims to be 30 acres for a single claimant.

Now here is a kicker that may create problems for a prospector today that wants to stake a placer claim. When a township subdivision survey is completed and approved the acreages labeled on the plat are THE OFFICIAL acreages. Say for instance you decide to stake a placer in a section where the official General Land Office plat reports an OFFICIAL acreage of 640 acres. However, surveying the section today does not show the section to be 1 mile square. If you conduct a proper subdivision of the section (according to the BLM Survey manual) and find that your placer claim is actually 22 acres, you are okay with respect to the Feds because the official acreage is 20 acres. The Colorado Revised Statutes state that your placer claim cannot be greater than 20 acres, period. Does that mean you have a problem? I've had numerous discussions with Forest Service and BLM surveyors and there is no consensus on this. The other problem is that a claimant is allowed to stake their own claim, but potentially having to properly subdivide a section to comply with the "legal subdivision" part of the mining laws is not a simple task for a layperson. Anyway, a bit of a hijack to this post on placer mining claim laws, but one that folks should be aware. The beauty of staking a lode claim is how simple it is compared to staking a placer claim. The lode claim is based on your discovery and the trend of the lode or vein. It's all local, so to speak. You don't have to go find section corners, quarter corners, 1/16 corners, etc. before setting your claim stakes.

Well enough beating this dead horse any more. Below is a reference that deals with placer claims for those that are interested.

The Snow Flake Placer Land Decision is a General Land Office decision regarding a placer claim in Alaska. It is still cited today as the definitive policy of the BLM regarding placer claims. It contains several other Dept. of Interior Land Decisions on placer claims. If you are interested in reading about those Land Decisions I suggest searching for them on the Dept. of Interior's Office of Hearings and Appeals web site. It also contains modern cases that superceded the old GLO Land Decisions; that being the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA). Here is the link to the Advanced Search web page.

I have attached a copy of the Snow Flake Placer Land Decision. I highlighted in yellow one section in the decision that folks might find interesting. It talks about an unpublished decision where the placer claim was approx. 50 feet wide and 16 miles long. The placer claim is located north of Tin Cup and east of the Taylor River. I initially thought that it was staked along a narrow gulch, but after figuring out its location, it appears that it was for a flume as it runs basically along a contour line. The Taylor Park Placer (Mineral Sur. No. 11841) has 700 corners and contains 102.974 acres! The attached PDF file also shows the connected sheet at the SE end of the Taylor Park Placer.

One of the Land Decisions cited in the Snow Flake decision is the Roman Placer Land Decision, which I have also attached a copy to this post. A look at the mineral survey plat shows an interesting (at least to me) oddity. In two places the placer does not include the stream within its boundaries. A little research of the field notes of the Roman Placer shows that the locatable mineral is fire clay. Fire clay, although being an in situ mineral was listed as a mineral like petroleum that was located in the past as a placer claim. It also shows a plat for a placer claim that did not require a mineral survey as it consisted of aliquot parts with several lode claims excepted out. Also, the Roman Placer never went to patent and the mineral survey was cancelled by the BLM in 1995.

¹BLM definition: ALIQUOT PARTS – Legal subdivisions, except fractional lots, or further subdivision of any smaller legal subdivision, except fractional lots by division into halves or fourths ad infinitum.

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