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Online Claim Research Questions


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16 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.

That's a good tip Jim. County Assessors can, and often will, help you locate property information. It works well in the dozen or so counties that do tax mining claims. Most states and counties do not tax mining claims.

The BLM Serial Register page for each mining claim also has the names and addresses of the owners of each mining claim. Using the Land Matters mining claims maps you are provided a link to each claim's Serial Register Page at the BLM. You can get the contact information for any claim right from your own computer. If you have a mobile internet connection you can look up claims and claim owners while in the field.

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Here is my process, maybe this will help clear up confusion about what to look for at the recorder, or how to do it. Most of this can be done online, and is quick and easy.

Most recorders have online databases back to the 1990's or so.Ā The BLM database is more or less correct for olderĀ claims for which they have done the data entry on and you know down to the 1/4 section what is claimed (more on that in a moment), so what IĀ do at the recorder website is find out if any newer claims have been filed which the BLM database does not yet have record of as my first step.

Search the recorder database by T/R/S, and then order results by date. Now just look for any claims filed at the county which are newer than the newest claims the BLM has record of. Download the location certificates, map them in Google Earth, import the KMZ into your phone or GPS, and now you know exactly where they are at on the ground and what to avoid.

If there are no older claims within any 1/4 section you will be prospecting, then there is no need to pull location certificates for those older claims since you can just avoid that whole 1/4 section, and you already know where the newer claims are at so you can avoid them. Good to go now, go detecting!

IFĀ however there are older claims the BLM is listing in a 1/4 section you are interested in prospecting then you now to map those older claims (or at least determine where they are at). You need to pull those location certificates at the recorder. If they are newer than the 1990's then you can do it from home on the recorder website at most counties, just like with the newer claims.

If the older claims are older than the 1990's or so, then this is the point you will likely need to visit the recorder's office in person and search either or both of the books or microfiche. In almost every county, this almost always boils down to first locating the index book. Some indexes are sorted by geographic area (T/R/S), some are sorted by name, some are sorted by claim names, some are sorted by document type. Most are also sorted by date. Locate you items of interest in the index, and then pull them up in whatever book the index lists. Take your stack of location certificates and map them out however you prefer.

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28 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

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 February 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.

Clay, curious- so do you use an automatedĀ method of scanning and converting the locationĀ descriptions of claims from BLM records to geographic coordinates on MLM, or do you have to code those manually? Ā I used to work forĀ a cartographic company, and manually coding information from legal land documents for GIS was excruciatingly slow. I am impressed by the work you have done onĀ the site!

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(Not Clay, but...) Considering a huge amount of location certificates which I pull lack even basic information to properly map them - like a tie point, or bearing/range from tie to a corner - and also because there are really no standard forms to use to program automated data recovery from, there is really no good way to automate the mapping of all the older claims unfortunately.

Even doing it by hand is impossible for a lot of claims. You'd be surprised how many "claims" people pay money to file yet put apparantly zero thought into putting even the most basic minimum amount of location information onto them.

That's why I thought it was good to see the online claim filing system on the MLRS. But we'll see how that goes, I hope now it doesn't start a deluge of paper staking.

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4 minutes ago, jasong said:

Here is my process, maybe this will help clear up confusion about what to look for at the recorder, or how to do it. Most of this can be done online, and is quick and easy.

Most recorders have online databases back to the 1990's or so.Ā The BLM database is more or less correct for olderĀ claims for which they have done the data entry on and you know down to the 1/4 section what is claimed (more on that in a moment), so what IĀ do at the recorder website is find out if any newer claims have been filed which the BLM database does not yet have record of as my first step.

Search the recorder database by T/R/S, and then order results by date. Now just look for any claims filed at the county which are newer than the newest claims the BLM has record of. Download the location certificates, map them in Google Earth, import the KMZ into your phone or GPS, and now you know exactly where they are at on the ground and what to avoid.

If there are no older claims within any 1/4 section you will be prospecting, then there is no need to pull location certificates for those older claims since you can just avoid that whole 1/4 section, and you already know where the newer claims are at so you can avoid them. Good to go now, go detecting!

IFĀ however there are older claims the BLM is listing in a 1/4 section you are interested in prospecting then you now to map those older claims (or at least determine where they are at). You need to pull those location certificates at the recorder. If they are newer than the 1990's then you can do it from home on the recorder website at most counties, just like with the newer claims.

If the older claims are older than the 1990's or so, then this is the point you will likely need to visit the recorder's office in person and search either or both of the books or microfiche. In almost every county, this almost always boils down to first locating the index book. Some indexes are sorted by geographic area (T/R/S), some are sorted by name, some are sorted by claim names, some are sorted by document type. Most are also sorted by date. Locate you items of interest in the index, and then pull them up in whatever book the index lists. Take your stack of location certificates and map them out however you prefer.

That's pretty much the same system I use in Nevada jasong. The only difference being my clients want all the claims mapped no matter what the age.

The availability of information varies a lot by state and county. In Arizona location notices and amendments are available online for free. Every County Recorder is required to record mining claim records by TRS as well as Grantor/Grantee, date and type of document. That's true of the entire state except Maricopa County who have refused to record their documents to the standards defined by the legislature despite many requests over many years.

In California it appears the only recording standard is send more money and hope they eventually respond in some way. Different counties there have different fees and policies. Little tiny Mono County is responsive and will often email you the requested docs for free if you are polite, patient and respectful. Another county (to remain unnamed) wants thousands of dollars before they will respond. The largest county has refused to search their records for the last year cuz covid. In California you pays yer money and take your chances.

Idaho is a mixed bag but I've found the recorders there to be helpful and responsive. Not all counties have online access but even some of the smallest counties do have online free downloads of records.

Obviously I deal with Recorder's in all the western mining states as well as beyond, It would take more time than I have to outline my experiences with all of them but the one thing that becomes obvious rather quickly is that there is no standard method of acquiring public records, mining or otherwise. You've just got to learn the local systems and jump through whatever hoops are presented.

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Yeah I should probably preface my advice with the statement that I do not prospect in California and know nothing about the local government systems there since that state sounds like it can often be another country in some ways.Ā So many people there and so much private land that it's just easier for me to avoid and stay in my loner bubble.Ā :cool:

Most everything I do is in AZ, NV, CO, WY. And I'm looking more into ID, SD, and MT lately since they are much closer to me and my ability to travel is reduced from what it once was. And since all my old friends basically liveĀ in Oregon I'm looking at stuff there too lately.

I was surprised that even Esmeralda county - population like maybe 900 and without a single incorporated town - even had online document access (though admittedly that one lacks some features). Some states seem to do things well, others not caught up to the modern era yet.

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47 minutes ago, GotAU? said:

Clay, curious- so do you use an automatedĀ method of scanning and converting the locationĀ descriptions of claims from BLM records to geographic coordinates on MLM, or do you have to code those manually? Ā I used to work forĀ a cartographic company, and manually coding information from legal land documents for GIS was excruciatingly slow. I am impressed by the work you have done onĀ the site!

On Land Matters I create the claims mapping with a proprietary system I've built into my spatial database. Even though that sounds "automatic" it still takes about 12 hours to process the 30 plus Gigabytes of claim data provided by the BLM twice a month.

For individual claims mapping in my business jasong pretty much outlined the system. It's very involved work with huge amounts of research required to compensate for the often poorly located claims.

Here's an example from my claims mapping this week. I'm researching a group of claims from the 1900 period in a well developed mining district. This group of claims has no metes and bounds description and the tie to a known permanent monument refers to "the white bridge on the paved road". This mining district is now composed of large mine pits that have completely obliterated any past roads or bridges from that period. The only other location reference is to another group of claims that were never recorded at the County and were abandoned in 1914. I have now managed to map the claims after researching the highway department records (no results), mining district records (missing), old maps (no results) and a long conversation with a regional historical society member (success!).

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8 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

On Land Matters I create the claims mapping with a proprietary system I've built into my spatial database. Even though that sounds "automatic" it still takes about 12 hours to process the 30 plus Gigabytes of claim data provided by the BLM twice a month.

For individual claims mapping in my business jasong pretty much outlined the system. It's very involved work with huge amounts off research required to compensate for the often poorly located claims.

Here's an example from my claims mapping this week. I'm researching a group of claims from the 1900 period in a well developed mining district. This group of claims has no metes and bounds description and the tie to a known permanent monument refers to "the white bridge on the paved road". This mining district is now composed of large mine pits that have completely obliterated any past roads or bridges from that period. The only other location reference is to another group of claims that were never recorded at the County and were abandoned in 1914. I have now managed to map the claims after researching the highway department records (no results), mining district records (missing), old maps (no results) and a long conversation with a regional historical society member (success!).

Thatā€™s impressive sleuthing! Ā Whenever my wifeā€™sĀ workĀ (sheā€™s an archaeologist)Ā runsĀ into obscure land descriptions that use geographic points like yours that are long gone for benchmarks, sometimesĀ Sanborn maps help. Ā TheyĀ located the foundation and walls to a SpanishĀ mission annex building using theĀ description of where it was in a old document describing the buildingĀ it was next to in town.

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5 hours ago, GotAU? said:

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

I don't know about where you are, but here the answer is yes. That is because here in California even unpatented claims have to have tax paid on them because they are considered private property. But once again, this is through the county assessors office.

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43 minutes ago, Jim_Alaska said:

I don't know about where you are, but here the answer is yes. That is because here in California even unpatented claims have to have tax paid on them because they are considered private property. But once again, this is through the county assessors office.

I believeĀ unpatentedĀ claims are federal land, so why areĀ they considered asĀ private property and taxable by the counties in any state, including here in California? Ā Is it a property tax or assessment Ā for something like aĀ buiness tax? Ā Iā€™m new to claimsĀ and amĀ not sure what the typicalĀ county taxĀ fees are that I would be facingĀ if I wanted to stake oneĀ here in So Cal onĀ BLM land. Ā Also, how do the countiesĀ assess the value for determining theĀ feesĀ for the taxes?

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