CHAPTER 4 INTRODUCTION TO EXOTIC RECORDS

• Jurisdiction: United States

Land and Permitting II
(Jan 1996)
CHAPTER 4
INTRODUCTION TO EXOTIC RECORDS
Thomas E. Root
Root & Allbright, P.C.
Denver, Colorado

When most of us think about mining records, we think title records, either those found in County courthouses or the corporate records generally on record with a state Secretary of State. Perhaps this is because mining records were often synonymous with real estate records, for years the bulwark of attorney's and landman's practices.

However, if you think about it, real estate records are but a fraction of the total record keeping task related to the mining industry. For the person charged with responsibility for government policy regarding the public lands years ago, the interest was in production of materials mined from those lands — a task performed by the Bureau of Mines throughout this century. In a like vein, the potential production of materials produced from those lands was a matter of concern to those governmental entities focused upon the potential occurrence of commercially viable deposits of minerals — a subject studied by the U.S. Geological Society for decades.

Of course, since we are addressing the interest of government in mines and minerals, we cannot overlook its interest in revenue from exploration, production, and sale of those minerals — a job of the Internal Revenue Service. Nor can we overlook the interest of the government in

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full employment, which once again suggests the keeping of production records, potential production and the like.

Moving from the government side, one should do well to remember that individual entities had need of record keeping for their own internal purposes, documentation of which may be found in corporate archives and similar depositories.

But why are these records important to us, today, if we are not charged with the responsibility of productiveity of the public lands, full employment, or gathering of federal taxation? A simple statement should suffice. I had a professor in law school, Mr. Frederick Chen, who once said "If I understand history I will beat you every time. Not one time out of ten, or one time out of one hundred, but EVERY TIME." This was quite a statement in a law school setting where absolutes were viewed as the expressions of a deranged mind. But my experience has been similar — particularly in a field such as public lands and mining which drips with historical resonances from policy decisions made decades ago. Over the past 20...