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We've added a new mapping layer to the Land Matters Mining Claim Maps. You will find the new layer under the "Claims" mapping group on every mining claim map. It's named "Mining Claim Fees Paid". The mining claim maps start without the new layer displaying so you will need click the checkbox next to the layer name to begin using this map layer. This new map layer shows the total amount of maintenance fees paid to the BLM for each Section since annual Maintenance fees were begun in 1993. These fee totals are for annual maintenance only and do not include filing or locating fees or the costs associated with State recording fees. Mining bonds and permit expenses are not included. Each Section that has had claims during the period from 1979-2024 are represented in green on the map. The more fees that have been paid for the section the darker the green. Some sections may have $0 in fees paid yet show several claims. These are Sections where all claims were closed before the maintenance fees began in 1993. As you zoom in the amount of fees paid will be displayed in the section. In this example the Fees Paid are displayed between the normal active mining claims display. To get Information at any zoom level you can select the information tool and click on your area of interest will return a window with the number of claims and the total of fees paid in that section. As with all our mining claim maps the current or prior existence of mining claims does not mean that the area is now open to new mining claims. What are annual maintenance fees? Until 1993 all Mining Claims were held by completing a minimum of $100 worth of development work per claim per year. This was known as the mining claim labor requirement. If you didn't perform work on your mining claim each year before 1993 they became invalid. In 1993 Congress, at the request of the BLM, enabled claim owners to pay an annual fee of $100 instead of completing their annual claim development work. This brought in funds to the BLM to administer the program as well as relieving them of their responsibility to check existing mining claims for evidence of development work. No longer did the BLM need to do field work to administer mining claims. Since 1993 the annual claim fees have risen to $165 per year for each Lode claim and $165 per 20 acres for each placer claim. Placer claim fees can be as much as $1,320 per claim. Unlike other government programs the mining claim case administration system at the BLM is entirely supported by claim owner fees. These annual mining claim maintenance fees are paid directly to each BLM State office to offset the costs associated with administrating the mining claim case files. No public monies are used. Here are the totals by State of mining claim fees paid for the years 1994 - 2023 Arizona $507,229,955 California $385,681,600 Colorado $380,865,975 Idaho $307,600,865 Montana. $224,791,660 Nevada $1,523,212,855 New Mexico $190,491,505 Oregon $99,909,290 South Dakota $107,769,290 Utah $556,540,015 Washington. $53,075,435 Wyoming $468,886,230 Total $4,806,054,675 Nearly 5 Billion dollars have been spent by mining claim owners to support BLM mining claim administration. The BLM is now collecting more than 83 million dollars in mining claim maintenance fees each year.

If you have permission to prospect on private land in NV, does a claim need to be filed for mineral rights by the owner? Just curious. Does anyone have experience with this?

It's easy enough to look up areas and see what sections have claims, how many claims, and the type of claims, but to get the exact location of each claim, you need to submit a request to the county recorder to get that info. At least that seems to be the way it works where I live. My question is, is it fair practice to just rely on claim markers when your hunting for a spot to prospect ? And what is the legality of the situation if you wander onto a claim that isn't properly staked?

I, like many people use onx for hunting and anything else to mark locations and to know land status. Since I got the prospecting bug, I've often wished there was an app to show current mining claims status. My questions to everyone are (1) who would subscribe to an app like this? And (2) Is there anything negative for having an app like this?

I live in elko county NV. There is about 50 historical claims within a mile of my home. All claims ended in the mid 1990's. From what I understand, up until the mid 90's, you could patent a claim, and the property was essentially yours. I've only found one spot that looks to have been dug and possibly washed. Otherwise I haven't seen any signs of workings at all. I'm wondering if maybe the main intention of these claims were solely for the purpose of acquiring the land, but gave up when Clinton put a stop to patented claims. Is this common throughout Nevada? I'm not near any known placer deposits. A few of the claims were listed as placer, but the large majority were lode claims. The only info on them when opened in mylandmatters, is number of claims, years of claims, and type of claim. No record numbers listed . I doubt I'll be able to get any history of them, but I will try.

I am interested to know what Seasoned Detector Prospector's thoughts are on owning mining claims. Is it worth the money and time to have private claims to work? Or do you just prospect open land or join a club with claims? ••• Here is an example ••• I seen claims in the Rye Patch for sale often. But then I read on this forum that the Rye Patch has been hammered for 60 + years, but yet Gerry In Idaho classes seem to always pull out gold with advanced tech. Would it be wise to purchase a claim in the Rye Patch in hopes that the technology advances greatly in X amount of years? And it doesn't have to be The Rye Patch, just mining claims in general as a Detector Prospector. Thank you for your time and advice on this topic.

Good evening fellas, Last trip To WA I was impressed as there were so many old gold mines, many were 5-30 meters deep, and I saw one shaft actually had two leves (stories). I wonder if someone can dive in and prospect in the tunnel, where there still might be gold behind the tunnel but cannot be found by the early explorers as 100 years ago they didn't have detectors? Any stories or experience? Surely it Must be dangerous ☠️💀👻

For the last two years the BLM has CLOSED many thousands of mining claims on one day. These claims are the "Abandoned and Forfeited" mining claims that didn't file their annual requirement. Last year the BLM closed 28,340 claims on November 17th. The previous year the BLM closed 20,704 claims on November 17th. At present there are 29,069 mining claims in the BLM database that are marked as not having paid their annual fees. Land Matters Claims Advantage members have been receiving updates and maps on these claims scheduled for closure for the last month. If the past MLRS system is followed this year there will be more than 20,000 claims closed tomorrow. Those closed claims will be removed from the Land Matters Mining Claim Maps next week with our new claims update. Land Matters Claims Advantage Members will get a map of those closed claims for their use. A smart prospector might find these closed claims maps useful. A forward looking prospector might see it's a great way to support the only FREE non profit mining claims mapping and educational charity organization.

If you are maintaining your mining claim under a small miner's waiver you should be aware that the required Form (3830-02) due August 31 is not yet available. Here is a link the official BLM version of the form on their website. As you can see it expired this past April. https://www.blm.gov/sites/blm.gov/files/3830-002_0.pdf The BLM is required to renew official forms every three years or the form becomes invalid. (Privacy Act, Paperwork Reduction Act) The currently available 3830-02 Form expired in April of this year. The BLM did put in a request for extension in March of this year but the paperwork never moved forward. In the last week or so the 3830-02 form has been removed from the approval process. It appears it is no longer on the list of BLM forms. Here are the current results from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the agency in charge of approving the form. https://omb.report/search.php?terms=1004-0114 That is where you will see if the required 3830-02 form has been approved. It will be at the very bottom of the list. At present it isn't even listed as a valid form. Some mining claims have been closed for submitting out of date forms. Technically the form has no value to the user or the BLM until the OMB approves the extension. This is a tricky situation. The California BLM put a modified 3830-02 in their mining claims packet this year. You wouldn't get one of those unless you requested it. Even though the form hasn't been approved they pasted a "2024" over the top of the "2023" on the expired form. They didn't change the approval date so it's obviously bogus. Some state offices have been suggesting owners just cross out the "2023" and write in "2024". I would not suggest doing that, I won't get into the details here but as you can imagine forgery of federal documents to receive a benefit is frowned upon. Here's what you need to watch out for with these forms. There is a block of type on the upper left corner and another on the upper right that together show that the form is current and valid. Here's an clipped example I made up of the top of the form with the critical numbers in red. If the dates don't reflect the three year extension period (2023 - 2026) it's bogus. If the form hasn't been approved by the OMB yet it doesn't matter if the numbers match it's bogus. I've discussed this problem with quite a few worried miners and the only real advice I can give is be prepared to pay the fee??? There may some political and there are certainly some social aspects of the BLM's failure to produce this required form. Please let's respect our host's wishes and keep any discussion about this on the practical and informative side. No politics please. Barry

Here it is summer already and the BLM has removed their mining claims maps - again. They say they think they will be back online on the 26th. 🐕🐴 For all those hoping to do some research before a weekend of prospecting Land Matters updated their Mining Claim Maps this week. These are the most up to date claims maps available anywhere. Heck they may be the only current free mining claim maps available anywhere. The Land Matters maps have more information than the BLM maps and they are the only maps that have the claim owner names. Anyone who has researched a potential prospecting area understands how important it is to be able to look up the claims paperwork and you can't do that without a name. So if you have been wondering how to check out that new area while the BLM is down again just wander on over to Land Matters and take a look around. We are always up and running and have been every day since 2014.

Back online.

If you own a mining claim in the lower 48 you may need to check the current status of your claim with the BLM. On November 17th the BLM closed 28,340 mining claims. On this same day last year they closed more than 20,000 mining claims. Many of the mining claims closed last year were closed in error. Although the BLM has reopened many of those mining claims closed in error last year many claim owners were left in limbo while the BLM tried to sort the mess. Unfortunately you may find it difficult to check claim status with the BLM. At the same time the BLM closed the 28 thousand plus mining claims they shut down access to the MLRS claims mapping and removed 91% of claim owner names from the search databases and maps. Now it appears they have also shut down the online records entirely. There is no indication if or when any of these public services will be returned. Land Matters Mining Claim maps have been updated since the claims were closed. The 28,000+ mining claims have been removed from the Land Matters claims maps. If you look on Land Matters and your claim isn't listed there is a very good chance your claim was closed. The mass mining claim closure took place on November 17th and the Land Matters mining claim data is current as of November 20th. I think at present Land Matters is the only source for this closure information and they have the most current claims information. If you know of other more current claims maps please share them here. You can also do a search on the Land Matters mining claim maps by the claim owner name and get the info on all your claims in one window. Land Matters did not remove claim owner information like the BLM did so you may have more luck searching Land Matters than searching the BLM (IF BLM returns the search tool functions) Land Matters also sent out a very large report early this week to their Claims Advantage Members with every closed claim listed with individual maps and links to the BLM records. Now you know why they call it the Claims Advantage. Land Matters educational charity was founded in 2014 for just these circumstances. After the BLM geocommunicator claims and land status map was taken down without notice or explanation in 2012 we noticed a lot of public information being removed from public access. We decided to do what the government has failed to do and aggregate and present this public information in a place that would be available to all people all the time. I just looked and the Land Matters servers have been providing this updated mapping for the last 1,650 days without a single glitch. More than 100,000 maps are served some days. And here is the remarkable thing. All these years and all this work are the result of an all volunteer non profit organization that relies exclusively on individual donations. Land Matters has no grants, has no advertising income, doesn't sell data and doesn't receive federal or state money. It really is a user supported resource. Thanks to all of you. Of course the Land Matters website is even busier with the BLM land mapping being closed. This has been a boom year for Land Matters user growth but like most small non profits it's been a tough year for donations. If you have found value in Land Matters and would like to see Land Matters continue to bring you public information there is no better time to make a donation. Or you could become a Claims Advantage Member by donating $100 or more and we will send you a copy of the 28,000 closed claims report along with another 23 (twice a month) for the next year. I don't know yet if any mining claims that were closed shouldn't have been closed. I've heard a few complaints but I haven't had time to check them out. I certainly hope that isn't the situation this year. If I owned a mining claim I would be checking the status. Barry

I’m not sure if I’m in the right forum but I found these minerals I believe to be Turgite on Magnetite. I am the first to discover it and there are 1000 pounds plus in this location. I found it with my pulse dive. The pieces are heavy and slightly magnetic. The issue is I’ve never done a mining claim and so far every international attorney I’ve talked to says they only work with companies not individuals. I found them in Italy. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!