About 3 weeks ago I received a certified letter from the BLM. It seems they were deeming our 60 acre Arkansas River claim forfeited for "failure to either timely file a maintenance fee waiver or pay the annual assessment". Now we had seen that the claim was not updated on LR2000 but I had gone in to the office in august and they had pulled it up and said it was ok. We now had 30 days to file an appeal. I dug through 15 years of claim paperwork and to my pleasure, I found all of the original paperwork with their notes and date stamps saying we were good to go.

Last thursday I went into Denver with the paperwork and after some head scratching, they found all of their paperwork mis-filed in one of my other claim files. They told me it was a good thing because the day before someone had came in to file on it. They said that the file is pulled a lot by people researching for something to be not proper.

This particular claim is 1 of only 4 that had the paperwork filed and bonds posted to allow dredging on it. We have 3 claims there, about 90 acres worth all permitting us to dredge. Here's a couple of links to 2 of the claims. The first one is the claim that was in dispute.

http://golddredgervideo.com/prospecting/la...10highhopes.wmv
http://golddredgervideo.com/prospecting/laborday2006.wmv

Today I got another certified letter vacating the decision and updating LR2000.

There really aren't any available claims on the Arkansas above Buena Vista and if I were to put a value on the claim, I'd ask around $15,000 and I think it would be easy to get.

Leonard

Wow....
good argument for running an LR2000 report every once in a while. I know that I ran one for my location shortly after I had paid my annual fees last time and it showed up as active. I should run another pretty soon for the heck of it. Need to keep tabs on my neighbors too.
I've heard of there being something like a 30 day grace period from when they notify claim owners of forfeit... not sure if that's true or not.

Hummmm,

Got me thinking, I have yet to see mine posted on LR200. I better get to checking into that. Thanks Leonard, Woody.

We had the 30 day grace period from the date the last claim owner signed for the certified letter. Thats what we were working on when I gave them the proof that we had filed the paperwork. They were actually very good in the process. I have no complaints on the BLM office. They just did their job. They have always been very helpful in the past.
Leonard

Good to hear. All of my dealings with the BLM have been pleasant as well... both with my Regional Office and the Lakewood HQ.
Woody, no worries on our claims. I just ran an LR2000 report minutes ago and we are both ACTIVE.