Coal lands may be located very much the same as a homestead, with the exception that residence upon the ground is not required, nor are improvements essential. In cases of dispute as to priority of location, the land office will recognize those claimants who have expended the greater amounts in improvements. One citizen may locate but one claim of 160 acres.
Since April 10, 1909, the Government has been disposing of its public coal lands under a classification that takes note of many details. The kind, grade, thickness, and purity of coal; the number of workable seams; the depth; the features of local supply; transportation facilities; and the average prices at which similar private tracts are held, are among the items recognized in the classification. Probably no two tracts will be sold at the same rate. In general, the new prices are higher than the flat prices that formerly prevailed and some pieces of land are now estimated as high as $175 per acre. In every case of application to purchase coal land, hereafter, the area in question will undergo inspection by Government experts and a price will then be assessed. This law is being severely opposed as being unreasonably severe, and its amendment may be looked for.
Placer lands were formerly permitted to be taken up in any shape, the boundary stakes being placed upon the ground in such a manner as to include only the desirable area, which is usually of an alluvial nature along some valley or gulch. This practice has been forbidden, however, and a locator is now obliged to take up his land in quadrilateral tracts conforming to the subdivisions of the so-called Public Survey. By this rule, it is permissible to file upon land which is laid off into lots of not less than 1/16 of a quarter section—or ten acres—and a claim may be composed of such lots as lie contiguously and which may thus be considered as one complete workable area. The claims are often of zigzag or L shapes, but the locator is enabled, at the extra expense of subdivision surveying, to avoid filing upon, and paying for, much ground that he feels is not desirable in a placer claim. The Government does not survey public domain into smaller tracts than quarter sections of 160 acres each, so that in the taking up of placers it often involves a great deal of expense to carry the subdivisions upon the ground into sufficient detail to ascertain the location of boundary corners.
One person is entitled to as many placer claims as he desires. Each claim of a single individual may contain not to exceed 20 acres and, as said, it must be of one continuous area. Associations of citizens to the number of eight may unite in the location of 160 acres, which will then be held in equal and common interest by the several locators. The restraint placed upon greed in the matter of locations, either placer or lode, lies in certain expenses entailed in work or improvements upon the land before patent may be issued and the legal requirement of the performance of labor upon each claim amounting to $100 per annum. Also, it is required that bona fide values be disclosed upon the ground. For each 20 acres located under the placer laws of the United States, not less than $500 worth of improvements must be made before the issuance of a patent.
The legal (not the technical) definition of lode land covers all grounds containing deposits of ore in its natural and original place of deposit. Under the laws, therefore, a citizen may file upon a tract of land to include a vein, lode, mass, chimney or any other form of ore body. The laws were framed at a time when miners were familiar only with the steep, tabular forms, synonymously termed veins or lodes in their nomenclature, and there were introduced features which time and progress in geological investigations have proved to be entirely unsuited to the needs of locators in many districts.
Our statutes provide that a lode claim may not exceed an area of 20,662 acres, this being the area of a parallelogram 1,500 feet long by 600 feet wide. The intention is to permit a discoverer to lay off a "lode line" along the outcrop of his vein for a distance of 1,500 feet and, at each end, to measure off, at right angles, a distance of 300 feet each way, merely as assurance that he covers the entire thickness of his lode. Since the surface contours of rugged country will crook the outcrop of a dipping plane (such as we may imagine a vein to be) the laws were constructed to permit a claim being laid off with angles or bends in the boundaries so that the outcrop might be kept closely along the middle of the claim.
The above dimensions and area are the maximum permissible under the Federal laws. The Government does not say that claims may not be less in extent, anywhere, nor does it prevent states, counties or even mining districts from making further limitations. In most of the western mining states and territories that have applied the mining law, the full maximum is allowed; but in Colorado no claim is legal if it exceeds a width of 300 feet, while in four counties of the same state claims have been restricted in width to 150 feet. By legislative enactment, since September 1, 1911, claims in all counties of Colorado are permitted to be taken up 300 feet in width. The citizens or miners of any new district, in any state or territory, may elect to limit claims to any size less than the maximum granted by the statutes and such a decision will be recognized by courts as binding upon all comers. This is an example of the rights of custom in establishing common law. In all shapes and widths of lode claims, there is now the rigid restriction that the two end-lines must be laid off exactly parallel.
A Gilpin County, Colorado, Scene,
Showing the Prize, Gunnell, Concrete, Gold Collar, and Eureka Mines.
The laws of our country contemplate the right of any locator of a vein to follow such vein down upon its dip, even if it extends beyond vertical planes passed through the side boundaries. The vertical planes through the end-lines, however, may not lawfully be penetrated in the extraction of ore bodies. The application of this doctrine of "extra-lateral rights" has led to innumerable controversies that have crippled many worthy mining enterprises. The inevitable habit of different veins to intersect, branch, unite, and in many other ways to cause complications, has served no purpose but to delay operations, cause legal warfare and embitter neighbors. So unjust have been courts' decisions in interpreting the lax laws that various mining districts have taken unto themselves the prerogative of deciding for themselves what is justice to all concerned; and we therefore find that many "camps" have unwritten laws under which claimants are restrained in their underground operations, to the ground contained between vertical planes through all boundaries, whether end or side. This is obviously the only fair plan, and it is hoped that, whenever the legislators at Washington get time to give to the matter the attention it deserves, our nation will be favored with a revision of this and a number of other objectionable mining laws which have retarded the industry. Ours is the only country having laws permitting extra-lateral rights and, upon this score, we are criticized by all foreigners.