Clay Diggins

I find it ironic that most claim owners view the small miners waiver as an exemption from paying the maintenance fee. In 1992 when the feds started charging an $100 annual fee for mining claims the fees were sold to miners by Congress as an exemption to ("in lieu of") performing the mandatory annual labor that had been required for the previous 121 years. Large mining companies loved the mandatory fee and had lobbied to drop the labor requirement. Small miners were blindsided and insisted on a labor alternative (The average wage in 1993 was half of what it is now). As a result the mandatory $100 fee was abandoned the following year and the small miners waiver was introduced along with the mandatory maintenance fee for claimants with more than 10 claims. A compromise that lasted nearly 20 years. To me it's obvious that: The maintenance fee favors larger mining companies. The labor requirement favors small miners. The maintenance fee overall encourages reduced claim development and more corporate "banking" of mining claims. The labor option encourages er... requires claim development. Just some personal historical observations. Which is better is a matter of perspective.

And yet those association claims with 8 small miners are under represented. I think my post title was a poor choice. Obviously I meant How Many Small Miners Claims are There? Although you could be 8 small miners ...Hey you never know on an internet forum.

We do have that information jasong. Land Matters make a "snapshot" of the entire BLM database structure twice a month. That's a lot more information than is available through the LR2000. Those snapshots allow us to do time basis comparisons that can't be done off the static database. Those snapshots add up to about 1.5 Gb each. I could dig out the action codes for notices or plans but that won't give you an accurate count. A good portion of surface plans are handled by other surface managers like the Forest Service. Each of those surface management agencies have their own regulations, procedures, and keep their own NOI and POO records. The BLM database does not show those other agencies notices or plans. They only track BLM land management actions. I'm working on presenting that data soon. It is revealing. There are a lot more lode claims than placer claims in the western states. I'm not surprised there are so many lode small miners but I'm thinking the percentage of small miner lode claims compared to all lodes will come in pretty low compared to the small miner placer claims percentage.

I was just going by the legal definition of a small miner Steve. Those miners with 10 or fewer claims that annually declare themselves small miners with a BLM waiver declaration. This standard has been in place since 1994 and forms the basis of one part of the charts calculations. This isn't a chart of those who qualify as small miners. It's a chart of claims that were brought under the small miner waiver by their owners. That's why the display is broken down by State, Lode and Placer. Those terms couldn't apply to the small miner themselves. Small miners, like all other federal claimants, keep their public claims records in the state where the claims are located. Small miners themselves aren't broken down into lodes or placers. I don't think I explained the chart basis in the title too well. Can you suggest another title that might explain the chart better? I'd be glad to change the title and repost. I'm sure there are as many other definitions of what a small miner should be as there are readers here. Please do present your opinion and discuss it openly. Land Matters offers information to the public in the hope people will work from a common basis to resolve their differences and make a better future for all land users. We believe that common basis should be the facts Just as each person has their own ideas about what a small miner should be there are common misunderstandings and clashes of opposing views on land use of all types. Often these differences are smaller than either side recognizes. Often the misunderstandings are based on rumor or myth. Reasonable miners aren't opposed to a clean environment any more than reasonable environmentalists are opposed to minerals and metals. There is common ground in every dispute, the trick is to leverage that common ground into a resolution that serves reasonable people. Ignoring the fringe hardcore on any land use issue and granting both sides can agree on the facts being discussed people tend to work things out among themselves. Land Matters tries to help that process along by providing a repository of information to work from. That's the reason Land Matters exists, to present the facts for all to see and to encourage people to shape their future on the land from basic reliable facts. When all the people have the facts the rest is up to them. Land Matters is an educational nonprofit 501c3 - not an advocacy group. We strive to present "just the facts" at Land Matters so as to inform and educate. Opinions are welcome but are part of the results of considering and discussing the facts. Opinions themselves don't become part of the database of knowledge presented on Land Matters but the facts involved in any discussion can be. Setting aside the legal definition of "small miner" I don't think your definition of a small miner would be very representative of actual small miners either if you think about it Steve. Many small miners with a POO never apply for the waiver. You haven't included small miners working under an NOI or not subject to an NOI or POO. Prospecting and Discovery work both are "mining" under the law yet neither normally requires a POO. NOIs represent valid mining operations that don't require active land management coordination. Forest Service NOIs are not recorded as actions in most areas either so getting a handle on all the NOI operations would be a challenge to say the least. Keeping things small and following best practice mining is one of the strengths of small mining in my opinion. Doing so can lead to mining with no POO requirement at all. That is a goal many small miners have told us they aspire to. Perhaps there is good reason to redefine "small miner" in the law to fit your definition Steve. With enough interest Land Matters would be glad to assemble, vet and present the facts relating to any other definition of small miner. This is a bit of a touchy subject with small miners and the words themselves can be a hot button on both sides. The chart is one effort to bring some common ground to the discussion. I'm hoping to present the actual numbers involved so everyone can get a handle on just what we each mean when we discuss just what a small miners place in the scheme of things is. Chris, the waiver basis for the figures are for ACTIVE status mining claims declared under small miner waivers as of November 15, 2015. Many waivers will still be denied for cause (or not). Those claimants under waivers that are denied will have the opportunity to change their status and pay the full claim fee or to challenge the waiver denial. The BLM typically doesn't even begin that process until January so these are current figures based on miner's declarations of status and ACTIVE mining case files. Barry

We've been experimenting with ways to share complex information more easily on Land Matters. Here's my latest efforts at making things clearer with a chart. It's a common question so I thought this might be a good test. There are about 380,000 mining claims in the western mining states. Out of those 380,000 mining claim there are about 19,236 that are declared as owned by small miners not subject to maintenance fees. A little more than 5% of all claims are small miners. Here's a chart that breaks down where those 19,236 small miners are by State and claim type. Let me know if this kind of chart works for you. If it does I'll make more.

I became familiar with a material very similar to this in the 1970's. It was Chloromelanite amphibole black jade from Stoddard Wells, California. Most of the Chloromelanite from that location was dark green to black although there was some very attractive deep green material too. The darkest of the jade often had magnetite inclusions that made it unsuitable for export to the Asian markets. Some folks figured out that the magnetite could be plated with silver(?) fairly easily. I believe this was an amalgam process but I couldn't tell for sure. Others have told me the included mineral was marcasite (white pyrite) which polished well by itself. I doubt that story because the marcasite I've worked with tended to oxidize dark gray a few weeks after being polished. I've seen similar included material from Wyoming but the magnetite appeared to be more well formed crystals than the "blobby" Stoddard Wells included jades. In the mid 70's my mother had occasion to travel extensively in the gem areas of Thailand and what was then known as Burma. She brought back many nice gem specimens and carvings including a small necklace of material virtually identical to what you show here. She didn't feel the material was natural and said she had been warned away by a friend but bought the piece anyway because she liked it. None of this is definitive of your material but the look and source was so reminiscent I thought I would share what little I know.

You can find the full text of WPB L-208 at the Land Matters Mining Library. Just type "War Powers" or "L-208" into the search box and download the PDF. It appears there were two exceptions to the closure order. Here is the one for small miners: "The provisions of this order shall not apply to any lode mine which pro- duced 1200 tons or less of commercial ore in the year 1941, provided the rate of production of such mine, after the issu- ance date of this order, shall not exceed 100 tons per month, nor to any placer mine which treated less than 1000 cubic yards of-material in the year 1941, pro- vided that the rate of treatment of such placer mine, after the issuance date of this order, shall not exceed 100 cubic yards per month."

Every year each claim needs to have a public record made at the County Recorder (mining law) and a filing made at the BLM (FLPMA requirement). The first year your Location Notice suffices for your public record and the first year maintenance fee filing at the BLM suffices for your FLPMA filing. The federal mining claims year ends on August 31 so if you located your claim before September 1st you will still have to pay or submit a small miners certificate. If you submitted a small miner's waiver certificate at the BLM before September 1st you will need to record an Notice of Intent to Hold Mining Claim with the County Recorder before your State mandated deadline.* A copy of that Intent to Hold must be filed along with the $10 fee per claim at the BLM State office on or before December 30 of the same year.** * In Nevada it appears that the State recording deadline is November 1st. ** That's December 30th - December 31st is a fail that will lose your claim.

We tend to concentrate on the things that irritate us about our government. That's a healthy attitude for responsible citizens that wish to keep themselves free and their government in check. Sometimes we forget that our government is powered by it's employees. We slip into resenting the very people we employ due to our concentration on the things we don't like about how the government works (or doesn't work) for us. That attitude can be very counterproductive. Ultimately it's those government employees that we rely on to do the right thing. Reviling the people that work for us creates a bad work environment and chases away the good employees that we need so badly to help run our government with intelligence and caring. We work with a lot of different government agencies and I can tell you that the people that work for us are not all bad by a long shot. We have many good employees that are passionate about their professions and good citizens who also want, and work for, a better government. I believe if we are ever to change our government to better serve us we need to recognize and encourage these good employees. Today I would like to introduce you to just one of these exceptional people. In Arizona we are very lucky to have Lee Allison as our Arizona State Geologist. Lee is an extremely intelligent and thoughtful man that has earned a justified respect among his peers. He has changed the office of State Geologist to better serve all of the people. This transformation has been remarkable to observe. This isn't written just to stroke the ego of a friend or business associate. I've never met Lee nor do I owe him a favor or wish a favor from him. My knowledge of Lee is based entirely on the work he has done as State Geologist. You too can see his ideas and writings for yourself at his very active Arizona Geology blog. Here's an example of some recent blog posts that you might find encouraging. Here is an article Lee wrote about some misleading information that came out after the Animas River spill this past summer. Here is another recent article on a similar subject regarding mineral loads in the waters of the west. Particularly important for those readers in the Eastern states so they can understand the natural differences between waters in different areas of the country. Notice that Lee isn't taking any position on pollution or politics he isn't using angry or inflammatory language in his blog he's just offering the facts and clearly explaining how those facts relate to the subject. He's just doing his job but he's doing it in the spirit and with the fairness that we hired him for. We at Land Matters have a similar philosophy. We believe that if all the facts are available to all the people, from a reliable neutral source, they will be more knowledgeable about the land issues we face today and in the future. A knowledgeable people can choose their own course with confidence. Knowledge is power. Educate yourself and prosper. Lee writes on many different Geology subjects. I've learned quite a bit by reading his writings. Give the Arizona Geology blog a read and you are very likely to become more knowledgeable about Geology. I guarantee it won't hurt your prospecting ambitions and you might just come to think as highly of our employee Lee Allison as I have. If so you might consider sending him a short Thank You email. Lee's not just our employee, he's a fellow human being and I believe he should know that we appreciate how well he's doing his job. I hope there are other posters here who will share their experiences with the best of our employees. Lets let them know we support their real efforts to make our lives a little better and richer each day. Let's help continue the legacy of dedicated people in service to the public. Heavy Pans Barry

I appreciate your desire to help your forum users keep their information private Steve. You run a good forum and keep it on track. I for one appreciate your efforts in sharing this resource and your knowledge so freely. Thank you for all you do. How about the ICMJ show next spring. Have they set the dates yet? Good calendar fodder. Barry

I wish! I could use a relaxing moment. It's been a very long few weeks Paul. It's our busiest time of year and I'm already beat. I hear there's going to be another week more fun than this one before the magic Sept. 1 date. Spent most of the day on the phone explaining to mining execs, that make 10 times what I do, where to sign their name and what the date is. The price goes up the third time they call with the same question that's already covered in detail in writing. Good thing they have plenty of money. I'm thinking there is a correlation between aixelsyd dyslexia and successful mining executives? I saw this post and all the stupid funny bottled up over the past few weeks just bubbled out. No offense intended but I find ferrets and tape almost as funny as monkeys and barrels. Say HEY! to BB next time you talk. Tell him if he's nice I'll loan him my Kangaroo Rat. Barry

Ferrets are illegal in California. Like dredges they are everywhere but most folks swear they are just funny looking cats (the ferrets not the dredges). The State goombahs look the other way if you swear it's a funny looking cat but I'm betting if you taped one to your coil the ferret lovers would come out of the ferret closet and try to have you arrested. Here in Arizona ferrets are legal and thus scarce. We usually just tape Kangaroo Rats to our coils but the Minelab junkies make fun if you don't have an official Minelab ferret. I'm not sure there is any difference between the official Minelab ferret and the non-official funny cat looking ferrets. I don't have either a Minelab or a ferrret so I can't give any first hand ferret experience. I use a Bounty Hunter hooked up with litz wire to my dowsing rod and the Kangaroo Rat works just fine. YMMV.

As they do twice each month Land Matters has updated the BLM LR2000 Mining Claims Maps. This is the next to last update before the end of the Federal Mining Claims year. We are working on some graphs and charts to illustrate the number and type of claims made and lost through the year. There is a pattern that changes by state and season that a wise prospector can use to optimize their research efforts. In the meantime enjoy the most up to date mining claims maps available at any price. Barry

Land Matters has offered downloads of all the Historical and current Topographic maps for a while. You can actually pick which year of topo you want for any area as well as the new style layered topos with aerial photo backgrounds. All of that with a few clicks on the Land Matters Topo Search Map. With more than 280,000 topos available from that one interactive map some people have been a little confused on the process for getting any particular Topo map downloaded. We've put together a short video to show you just how easy that can be. There are more informational videos on the Land Matters youtube channel and we have many more planned. Barry

Be careful of the Geocommunicator WMS and REST services. They haven't been updated in a very long time. I don't know how current the hunting maps are but I doubt they reflect the most recent changes either. The Surface Management link you are using above hasn't been updated since 2005. Yep 10 years stale locational information. There have been a lot of changes in those 10 years. At Land Matters we update the Surface Management layers as well as the Mining Claims maps as often as they are updated on the secure BLM back end servers. For the Mining Claims Maps that's on the 1st and 16th of every month. Regular as clockwork. We are working towards a daily update system. For the Surface Management Land Status Maps (and soon Subsurface Management status) it varies. The last update from the BLM on Surface Management boundaries was January of this year. The PLSS (CadNSDI) is being updated approx monthly now. Recently most of those updates are in Oregon and Washington but there are other changes elsewhere fairly regularly. The currency and accuracy of this information is important for anyone visiting the public lands. We do our very best to keep this information up to date. We host and update these constantly changing maps on our own servers rather than relying on stale government presentations. Check out the Land Status maps at Land Matters. There is a lot more there than just mining claims. Barry

The serial register page only locates the claim to the NW quadrant Mitchel. It's a pretty good bet that the small portion of Prichard creek open in the center of the NW quadrant is where that claim is located but we can't know that for sure without getting a copy of the location notice recorded with the county. That's why we provide a link to the County Recorder right on the claims map. There is no way Land Matters, or anyone else, can map claims to their actual boundaries across all those 387,800 active mining claims in the western public land states. We can get you within a half mile and provide the resources for you to get the rest of the answer yourself. Barry

That's all private patented land along the creek except one small portion in the NW of section 28. Not surprisingly that small portion appears to be claimed. The claim name? Gods 20 acres. That took 4 minutes on the Land Matters Idaho Mining Claims map. Turn on the Land Status layer to see what's public land. Turn on the PLSS layer to see what section you are in. Turn on the Aerial Photo layer to see the tailings piles. Click on the map while in "i" mode to get the link to the serial register page for the claim. Bobs yer Uncle. Barry

Thanks jasong, I'm sure you know how much work goes into this so your appreciation is particularly gratifying. We are treating the LR2000 mining claims as individual state databases. Updates can be done on the same basis as they are included in the LR2000. The biggest obstacle is the limited cache on the BLM server but we may have that solved soon. We are hoping to run some php currency scripts that will sync our database with the BLM's. Even though the Denver BLM techies have their hands full maintaining their system they are pretty cooperative if we do the heavy lifting from our end. We use postgis for virtually all of our mapping backend. This allows us to attach a three dimensional location to all the items in our library. The difference between maps and library items is negligible when viewed this way so we are able to search library items from a map or show the location of a library item on the map. You will be seeing a lot more of this implemented as we grow but it's already the basis of most of our maps now. Check out the Topo Search Map to see this working with multiple sources between postgis geom, our Library, and sometimes the USGS, Forest Service and NOAA sites. You can already query the map databases with either guided or boolean searches right from the map. This applies to most map layers, not just the claims database. Use the tool that looks like a pair of binoculars and configure your search terms from the interface or type boolean queries directly in the "Generated Query" box. You can add searches together for more complex queries. Use the little magnifying glass next to each item in the search results window to highlight and zoom to that item on the map or click on the yellow magnifying glass at the bottom of the results window to highlight and zoom to all the returned features. You can do some pretty interesting things with the advanced search functions. Try searching for all the claims with an assessment year of 2014 and you will get a list of all the claims that might still be closed in the future. You can of course search for claimant names and see all the claims someone has in a state or just search for a single claim by name or MC number and then zoom directly to the claim location. We already provide a search map that provides direct downloads of all the Master Title Plats and Supplemental MTPs in the GLO database. You will find those as an individual layer on each state's Land Status Map. At present there are only 10 states in the GLO database but we are working on sourcing MTPs for all the states that have them. We will be adding direct downloads of Historical Indexes, Survey Field Notes, Survey Plats, CDIs and several other features to those Land Status maps as we have the time. Alaska is not in the GLO MTP database but the BLM provides a WMS display of all the MTPs. You can view those MTPs displayed right on the Alaska Claims Map. I hope that answers your questions jasong? Feel free to ask more here or you can Contact Land Matters directly with your questions or suggestions. User feedback is really important to guide the development of Land Matters. Barry

By their calculations the gold in a single "load" amounts to 13 dollars. I figure they are going to have some expenses so I sent them a 10 "load" package and billed them 50 dollars. Sure hope they order more.

All modern digital maps are going to decimal degrees. Base 10 math is much easier than an arbitrary base 360/ base 60/ base 60 system. Even so with modern computers it's trivial to change the display to the system you are most comfortable with. If you are using Google Earth you can change the location display to decimal degrees, degrees minutes seconds, or UTM meters in the preferences. I think you will find deep in your GPS unit settings that you have similar choices there. Usually those are named something like ddmmss or dddddd. Between the two of them you should be able to come up with a way to match their displays. If you are using a Google map product you can put in the Latitude & Longitude coordinates in either form and the software will understand no matter how the coordinates are displayed. 5 decimals in Lat/Lon is going to be about three foot precision. Your maps and your GPS unit just don't have that sort of accuracy. GPS accuracy is reliable to about 30 foot which is the same as 4 decimals. We could easily show 20 decimals on the Land Matters maps but that would be greater than millionths of an inch precision. No mapping or GPS system can come close to that. Displaying the coordinates with greater precision does nothing to increase the accuracy of a map. Even though modern handheld commercial grade GPS can often, under the right conditions, give accurate readings within 3 foot that is not an accuracy you can rely on. Add in the errors for orthographic projection, 40 foot accuracy on the best Topos, 3 meter accuracy on aerial photos and the reality is that mapping rarely exceeds 30 foot accuracy no matter what the display precision is. Google Earth is an interesting, and often informative, way to view a location before putting boots on the ground but the accuracy, particularly with the "terrain" feature enabled, is not within any modern mapping standards. Expecting 5 decimal places of locational precision is wildly optimistic. Counties sometimes are very reluctant to give current plat information. The tax assessor often makes good money selling that information to real estate organizations. The platting systems in use by many counties today are some of the most advanced mapping done by government. Many of them see that as a cash cow. On our MinerDiggins FootPrints North and Middle Fork maps we were able to convince those counties to part with that information so we do have that included on those maps. In some areas of California the costs for access can run many thousands of dollars so that expense and the cost of some County Recorder's record copies can lock us out of mapping those areas ownership. This is a rapidly evolving field and many county assessors are beginning to loosen access to those maps. If they aren't freely available online sometimes a friendly call can get you access. Land Matters, as a non profit organization, can do a little arm twisting (they call this partnering in government speak) and get information for free or little cost. It is part of the long term land status program at Land Matters to provide local ownership information but that is a massive project that will require a major grant. Anybody with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare could get us started on that project. Barry

Thanks for the encouragement everybody! There's lots more to come. I just put up several more State Geology Maps and we are working on displaying Motor Vehicle Use Maps for the Forests soon. Win XP can handle the site tvanwho. Some of the very early versions of Internet Explorer fail when using the Library Search but the maps should be fine. Land Matters is entirely internet based so it will always be slower than FootPrint maps which are running locally on your computer. If you have a slow internet connection the difference can be um... frustrating. The Aerial Photos, on Land Matters, are the highest resolution available to the public. About 40% of the U.S. is 1 foot resolution or better, the rest is three foot. Google uses a gaussian blur overlay to smooth their Aerials, it makes them appear to be smoother and higher resolution but the actual resolution is the same in the U.S. Google does not allow other applications to use their Aerials so if you like theirs better you will have to use their platform. If you are having jumpy navigation it's probably because you aren't waiting for the map to load before making a new request. The map remembers all your requests and loads them in the order you made them. If you get too eager and click twice for the same action the map will see that as a different request and start loading again without waiting for you to see the first request. Also If you have a laptop the trackpad will probably try to zoom in and out if you use two fingers so be sure to avoid touching the trackpad between map requests. Land Matters maps don't have all the tools that FootPrints maps have. They do show your cursor position in decimal degrees at the bottom left of the mapping window and if you need degrees, minutes, seconds you can use the X/Y tool button to see the clicked coordinate position in decimal degrees and degrees, minutes, seconds. Barry

All of the Land Matters BLM LR2000 Mining Claims Maps have been updated! Claims displayed are current as of March 18th 2015. We built a completely new database for these claims maps over the last month. They will be much faster to display and query. The huge Nevada Claims map is now displaying more than 5 times faster. Thanks to Chris Ralph for the suggestion! Your mapping should be much faster now Chris. We update these maps once a month. With some sponsorship we could do it daily. If any of the many exploration geologists that are using these maps are viewing here please Contact Land Matters and let us know what you would like to see in the future. We've heard from several of you and we know there is a need for more complete information. Land Matters was formed to provide easy access to land information. If you are already a user please tell us how we can do our job better. Barry

KML is really just XML that's been tweeked very slightly by the Google children. Being text based it doesn't support true rasters. The row limit is 2048 which is going to be unacceptable to the end user. Less than cartoon quality. If you want to try more complex KML you might consider "super overlays" but even that is extremely limiting. Google wants to maintain control over the base maps and neither the KML format nor their restrictive licensing are going to allow you to get around that without your own server and petabytes of raster data. We could hope that the Minelab MLX format is more than a renamed xml text file but I doubt it. I'll look it over when I get a file sample. Barry

I checked out the Xchange2 software. Not much to it. It's all based on open source software. You should be aware it will automatically update your GPZ software as well as downloading your GPS data and notes each time you start the program. If you don't want your detector automatically updated you will need to avoid the program. The map function is just a pretty? shell around Google maps. Really nothing there that you couldn't get from Google maps alone once you have a converted GPZ file. I agree about the invasive software of Google maps. I don't use them at all for security reasons. Of course I have the option of building my own maps so it's not so hard for me to pass over their offer of "free" mapping. Send the file when you have time. I'm busy tomorrow so next week works. I won't be able to modify the Xchange2 program itself due to the usual license restrictions. I'll see what I can share next week. Barry

I do a lot of coding work with GPS file formats. I'd love to try out this new format. Most of this stuff is surprisingly simple when you dig into it. If someone could send an MLX file to me I could try to develop a simple free program to do the transfers. I'm sure the above method works but it's pretty clunky for the average user. I'm not looking for your secret spot so a file with just a simple local record would be fine. Barry