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Locating Claim Owners


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The recent post on "Lode Claims" discuss a interesting and important subject on involving lode & placer mining claims and access. Beside the good information it demonstrates just how serious miners are about their claims holdings.  So make sure you get "express written permission" from the mining claim owner(s) before entering onto their claims to prospect and/or detect.

A word of advice leave your pets and firearms at home and take your trash out with you.  If you agree to share a portion of your finds with the owner(s) keep your word.  Don't close the door for the next person.

So how do you contact a claim owner(s) to get permission to prospect/detect on a open active mining claim. There are several members far more update on these BLM websites than me and will fill in most of my mistakes and omissions. This should at least get us headed down the road.

Using Foxfire as the browser ( these websites are not user friendly so use the BLM Tutorial and type in information exactly as indicated per the LR2000 samples; use all Caps.

For overall claim filing information and location description (lode & placer); Booklet

http://www.BLM.gov

On the left margin click on "What we do" then hit "more"; scroll down to the following two topics: Mining and Mineral; Mining Claims and Sites on Federal Lands.

https://navigator.blm.gov/home

Click on the "Inactive map" located in the upper center of the page; you will see a tool bar along the top of the map for zooming in & out and panning.

On the right margin click the "PLSS" button for bring up meridian, township, range, section grid on the inactive map; click on the +zoom in then click on the ma to move to the area (state) you want; write down the "median, township, range and section" numbers.

http://www.BLM.gov/lr2000

Located on the left margin click through  and read  “Tutorial”, “Help Guides”, “Reference Codes”

Click on “Run Reports”.  Scroll down to “Public Mining Claims Reports”

Click on “Pub MC Geo Index”

Click the “Meridian Township Range Section *” and ” County” buttons;

Click “Select Criteria” at the bottom 

The “Mandatory Criteria” window will pop up.

Click on the “Set” button for each criteria then the “Close” after selecting or entering the information requested.

“Admin State” select a state from the scroll down window; Close

In “Case Disposition” select “Active”; Close

The “Meridian Town Range Section” (MTRS) window has a MTRS Format sample located on the upper left; use all Caps; enter the information in the box just below “Clear Above Valves” then hit the check button. You can run more the MTRS at a time; click the “Select All” button; Close

“County” select a county from the scroll down window; Close

click “Run Report”

Confirm your selections then click” OK”

The report will include claim names, number, location by MTRS down to the NW, NE, SW, SE corner of the section per page# 10 of the BLM booklet “Mining Claims & Site on Federal Lands”.

Clicking a  “claim number” of any individual claims will bring the claim document; the claim owner(s) are listed by name, address and zip code; including the claim size in acres.

The county “Recorders Office” of the county where the claim is located will have copy on file of the claim owner(s), address, claim size, type, and specific location in the section (booklet page#10 sample: 20 acre Placer Claim E 1/2 NE 1/4 NE 1/4 per section, township, range, meridian.)

or you can just join a prospecting and/or detecting club in your area of interest.

Good Luck

 

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Geocommunicator is being decommisioned in a few weeks. There is a new site called BLM Navigator that will supposedly amalgamate a bunch of old functionality along with some new into one place.

https://navigator.blm.gov/home

Though it's not even close to done, most the stuff there is missing or broken as of now. I was going to make a seperate post on this, but they keep not getting it updated so it's not really worth using yet.

I've been told they are adding new functionality like direct links to MTP's from the map interface, potentially even public/private mineral ownership such as on their paper maps. Potentially even claims again. But who knows. I applaud Land Matters for picking up their slack, but this is all publically funded data and it really should be provided as a service to tax payers by the agency responsible for managing it ultimately since we've already paid for it, especially since a direct connection to their database would mean instant syncing and the most up to date data possible, instead of the bi-weekly (if they are on time, which is rare) email and server dump they current use to distribute LR2000 updates for 3rd party mapping programs.

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I always check the BLM's LR2000 and the local County Recorder/Register of Deeds Office (name varies by state) for the locality, then visually check the area for claim markers, before any prospecting is done. Local research at the county level and on-site is important because there may be new claims not in the Recorders Office or the LR2000 database yet.  Thanks for sharing this. 

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Landmatters has a video tutorial for their Mining Claims Maps. They list the claims by state; with the number of current placer & lodes claims by section. They link diectly to the LR2000 Claims Reports plus provide a county recorder contact. The annual mining assessment date is 1 September of each year but BLM does not update the "open"and "closed" claims status until well into the following year.  To my knowledge patented claims are not listed by BLM but a good topo map, BLM or Forest Service map will indicate the patented claims within their boundaries; the county recorder will have the owner(s) information on file. BLM is also back-logged on current claims so many claims are not staked. 

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