QUOTE (CP @ Jan 1 2016, 01:18 PM)
[snip]
Since the state road dept has only an easement (stated by words such as "right of ways" or "controlled") which is not ownership but is an agreement from the land owner (who pays the taxes) with the county or state to have and maintain the road on said property parcel. Thus they (CDOT) have "control" of the ground surface use, but still do not have ownership which means they are not the ones to ask for permission to prospect that ground around or under roads.
[snip]
But on public lands (FS or BLM lands) they would be open, that's where you can prospect a "road cut"
as long as no claims exist there of course.
If one is prospecting near roads in recreational areas/private lands or constructed devices of any kind CDOT has erected, then of course it's a simple answer,
don't dig by or near or especially under anything like culverts, pylons, supports or actual roadways.
QUOTE (CP @ Jan 8 2016, 04:38 PM)
Sorry I did not specify enough, I thought we'd already covered this point...... I am not referring to road cuts on any highways...state or interstate nor any county "maintained/paved" roads for sampling.... I was in the mindset of more FS or BLM roads that are not paved when I said that, and is where of course prospectors should be possibly parking or hunting for minerals in an area. Not along any highways/interstates, that would just be silly and unsafe! I think most of the readers in this forum are going to be thinking along those lines I've just described when discussing road cuts and sampling them.
CP,
Thanks for the clarification. The first quote above indicated that you were talking about any road controlled by CDOT. That led to my replies that CDOT does not obtain easements, but rather fee simple title to the surface and restrictions on mining the subsurface from within the ROW.
As for your example in the second quote above, it depends. There very well may be "restrictions" on prospecting. As an example, I recently ran across a grant of a ROW for a power line on BLM's GLO Records web site. Below is the introductory text to a grant by the Federal Power Commission of a right of way to Public Service Company of Colorado in the 1930s. The language I highlighted in boldface withdraws the land within the ROW from mineral entry.
From: Federal Power Commission, Washington
To: The Commissioner, The General Land Office
In accordance with the provisions of section 24 of the act of June 10, 1920 (41 Stat. 1063), notice is hereby given that the lands of the United States hereinafter described are included in a power project for which amendatory application has been filed by Public Service Company of Colorado, Denver Colorado. The lands are embraced in a proposed transmission line right of way. The date of filing of the application map is Xxx. x, 1930s. Under said section 24 these lands are, from said date of filing, reserved from entry, location, or other disposal under the laws of the United States until otherwise directed by the Commission or by Congress.....
In this case, the grant of a right of way is an easement. If someone had staked a mining claim before the date of filing, their claim would still be valid. In the above case, there were several lode claims that were located before the issuance of the withdrawal. Those lodes were later patented. Today, Xcel Energy's position is that they have a prescriptive easement across those lode claims to maintain the line.
A road across the Public Lands may very well have a grant similar to the above example where locating mining claims within the granted ROW is not allowed because the land was withdrawn from mineral entry. I have tried to keep my answers generic, but if someone has a specific case they'd like to share we can get into the particulars.
One of the things that I especially enjoy about land surveying is that each case is unique. I have general principles to follow, but I am not constrained to those "rules". Curtis Brown (a California land surveyor and author of several books on land boundary law) coined a phrase many years ago when discussing boundary law in his book, "Boundary Control and Legal Principles". The text listed several tenets of boundary law and their order of significance when he ended the discussion with, "The contrary can be shown!"