Jump to content

Online Claim Research Questions


Recommended Posts

25 minutes ago, Swegin said:

Thank you very much.   I take it the those Footprint DVD's don't get updated any more.  $80 is cheap compared to how long it would take me to locate the boundaries.

 

All the FootPrints were in the process of having the claims updated in the summer of 2019. Sadly my partner passed away in the middle of the process and I've had to put those updates on hold. I still plan to update the FootPrints claims layers and some other features on some of the FootPrint maps but I've been swamped with work from mining companies for the last year.

In my opinion the custom geology mapping on the Greaterville FootPrint alone makes it worth the price for anyone that works that area. The 50/50 boundaries are a bonus.

The 50/50 area has produced some of the biggest detected nuggets in Arizona history. I've detected and water processed material there. There is a lot of gold in the 50/50 area. I was the caretaker for Kentucky Camp and there has never been a limit on prospecting in any reasonable form although working inside the Kentucky Camp fence line is strongly discouraged.

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites


10 hours ago, oldmancoyote1 said:

An adjacent property is 50 50.  I strongly suspect that my area of interest is also 50 50. If it is, I suppose I can not  metal detect there.   Any info on wether I can metal detect 50 50 land.

Yes it's OK to detect there.  If you are still not sure I would go downtown and ask the FS Rangers, assuming that the office is open with Covid and all.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Clay Diggins said:

The 50/50 area has produced some of the biggest detected nuggets in Arizona history. I've detected and water processed material there. There is a lot of gold in the 50/50 area. I was the caretaker for Kentucky Camp and there has never been a limit on prospecting in any reasonable form although working inside the Kentucky Camp fence line is strongly discouraged.

Kentucky Camp is nice just to walk around and imagine what life was like back then.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

47 minutes ago, Swegin said:

Kentucky Camp is nice just to walk around and imagine what life was like back then.  

Kentucky Camp is an interesting recreation of a bygone time. I really like the Greaterville area. Good gold and a great climate. It was really quiet and peaceful living there.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I spoke with the leading woman who oversees the claims and minerals with the BLM in Montana two days ago and she said they are so swamped with new claims that it will take over two years or more to get caught up. There are over 1000 new claims filed in Montana within the last few months. She said their goal is to get to a point where they and all of us can pull up the MLRS map of an area and see the claim boundaries without going to a separate data page to get the coordinates. She also said they are working more with latitudes and longitudinal coordinates to log where a claim is  with this new system the BLM has gone to.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So Clay I have a question for you. Would it be easier to just get a seven minute topo maps of an area someone wants to find the boundaries of claims and physically take it to the county recorders office and point out to the recorder where you want to locate a claim and see if it is open or not?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Goldseeker5000 said:

So Clay I have a question for you. Would it be easier to just get a seven minute topo maps of an area someone wants to find the boundaries of claims and physically take it to the county recorders office and point out to the recorder where you want to locate a claim and see if it is open or not?

That's not the function of the County Recorder. The County Recorder just records documents and provides them to the public when requested, they can not and will not do your research or mapping for you. They are forbidden by law from giving you a legal opinion or advice. Defining the location or validity of a mining claim, or real estate for that matter, would be giving legal advice.

Your question seems to assume that mining claims are a defined grid of mineral rights assigned to individual claimants. The truth is far from that ideal with many overlapping and poorly defined claims stacked and scattered around potentially mineralized areas.

There are no shortcuts to due diligence regarding mining claims. You can either do the research yourself or hire a professional. Even if you hire a professional you will need to understand the basics of claim location and description. At Land Matters we have provided you the tools and information to learn the skills you will need as well as providing all the public information available.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Goldseeker5000 said:

I spoke with the leading woman who oversees the claims and minerals with the BLM in Montana two days ago and she said they are so swamped with new claims that it will take over two years or more to get caught up. There are over 1000 new claims filed in Montana within the last few months. She said their goal is to get to a point where they and all of us can pull up the MLRS map of an area and see the claim boundaries without going to a separate data page to get the coordinates. She also said they are working more with latitudes and longitudinal coordinates to log where a claim is  with this new system the BLM has gone to.

There have not been thousands of new claims located in Montana in the last few months. In the entire 2020 mining year there were 1,625 claims located in Montana. In the month of January there were 2 claims located in Montana. As of March 1 the Montana BLM had a backlog of 115 mining claims waiting for adjudication. That's directly from the BLM's own records and includes mining claims in the State of South Dakota which is administered by the Montana state office of the BLM.

Compare that with Nevada where there were 15,641 mining claims located in the 2020 mining year and 3,841 mining claims located in January of this year alone.

Claims are not located by longitude and latitude. Legally there are only two methods of locating mining claims, by aliquot part and by metes and bounds. Mining claim location notices received at the BLM are regularly rejected for not locating by one of the two legal methods or by locating by the wrong method for the type of claim or location.

The BLM does not have a data page with coordinates. What the BLM is attempting to do in the future is to display new claims by the coordinates input into their new online mapping system. There is no plan to map all the 400,000 plus existing mining claims.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is one other resource that I have not seen mentioned in this thread. I am not sure it is relevant in all places, but it has worked for me in the past.

Keep in mind that a mining claim is private property; as such taxes have to be paid on it. That means that the county assessors office will have tax information about the claim. If you can even just point to a location on a map, the assessors staff can and will give you, or direct you to their ownership information. This information does not divulge the status of a claim, whether active or inactive; but it will tell you who pays the taxes on a claim, which would be the claim owner.

With that information in hand you can make contact with the claim owner and ask him or her in person about the status of the claim. This is by no means fool proof, because the claim owner can tell you the claim is active, whether it really is or not. But it is one more tool for you to try in determining claim status.

I use this for real estate investing purposes when I have no idea of the ownership of a property I am interested in. Where I live in Northern California the county assessor's staff is very helpful and will guide you through the process, which may include you having to actually look up the information in their computerized records; they have computers for public use right in their office, but even then if you get stuck they will walk you through it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • The title was changed to Online Claim Research Questions
4 minutes ago, Jim_Alaska said:

There is one other resource that I have not seen mentioned in this thread. I am not sure it is relevant in all places, but it has worked for me in the past.

Keep in mind that a mining claim is private property; as such taxes have to be paid on it. That means that the county assessors office will have tax information about the claim. If you can even just point to a location on a map, the assessors staff can and will give you, or direct you to their ownership information. This information does not divulge the status of a claim, whether active or inactive; but it will tell you who pays the taxes on a claim, which would be the claim owner.

With that information in hand you can make contact with the claim owner and ask him or her in person about the status of the claim. This is by no means fool proof, because the claim owner can tell you the claim is active, whether it really is or not. But it is one more tool for you to try in determining claim status.

I use this for real estate investing purposes when I have no idea of the ownership of a property I am interested in. Where I live in Northern California the county assessor's staff is very helpful and will guide you through the process, which may include you having to actually look up the information in their computerized records, but even then if you get stuck they will walk you through it.

Jim, I can see APN numbers and a map showing parcel boundaries and other information about patented claims mapped on our county Online GIS system, but it’s only the patented claim lands that show up. Are you able to get information like that on all mineral claims?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...