CHAPTER 6 COUNTY RECORDS AND SPECIAL FEDERAL RECORDS

• Jurisdiction: United States

Federal Land Status Determination
(May 1971)
CHAPTER 6
COUNTY RECORDS AND SPECIAL FEDERAL RECORDS
ROBERT G. PRUITT, JR, ESQ.
JARDINE, BALDWIN, PRUITT & BROWN
900 EL PASO NATURAL GAS BUILDING
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84111

OUTLINE

I. COUNTY MINING RECORDS

A. Location Notices and Certificates

1. Claim Name Index

2. Locator Index

3. Entry Book (date index)

B. Proofs of Assessment Labor

1. Claim Name Index

2. Party Name Index

C. Special Indexes

1. Claim Name Index

2. Leases and Agreements

a. Mining Leases

b. Option Agreements

3. Miscellaneous Index

a. Mortgages and Liens

b. Unclassified instruments, affidavits

4. Deeds and conveyances

5. Placers vs. Lodes (separate indexes)

6. Inside vs. Outside Mining District records

7. Patented Claims

a. severed surface/mineral estates

b. tax sales

D. Conflicting Claims

1. Inspection of Property

2. Claim name references in other documents

3. Index references to district, etc.

4. Local inquiries and interrogations

5. Similar or suggestive claim names

6. Other locations by same parties

7. Proofs of Labor clues

8. Special techniques of last resort

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a. inventory all active claims

b. initiate patent proceedings

II. SPECIAL FEDERAL RECORDS

A. Indian Tribal Records

B. Forest Service

1. District office

a. P.L. 167 determinations

b. Normal surveillance of claim activity

2. Regional office

a. Interview staff mining engineer

b. Maps, aerial photos and reports

C. BLM District office

1. P.L. 167 determinations

2. Normal surveillance of claim activity

3. Maps and reports

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HISTORY

In the beginning, all mining claim notices and documents were filed for record with the Register or Recorder of the organized Mining District in which the claims were situated.³ In time, organized Mining Districts were either abandoned or formally abolished as official record depositories, and existing mining records were transferred to the office of the County Recorder of the county in which the district was situated. Today, the County Recorder receives and files all notices and documents pertaining to mining claims within his county. To a large degree these mining claim transactions are still maintained and indexed separately from the other real property transactions handled by the County Recorder's Office, and these records are generally referred to as the "Mining Records".

TRACING CLAIM TITLES

The most common reason for examining County Mining Records will be to determine ownership of known mining claims, and to identify any outstanding interest or obligation against the claims. At the same time the examiner will want to confirm that the required work necessary to hold the claims has been timely performed and proper affidavits recorded.

The usual practice is to trace the recorded entries affecting the subject claims from the original Notice or Certificate of Location, and any Amended Location Notices, down through the annual Affidavits of Assessment Labor to the current date, noting any Mining Leases, Mining Options or Agreements, liens or encumbrances which may appear in the records and which may be unreleased or unexpired. Claim descriptions in the recorded Notices or Certificates of Location should be carefully compared with the boundaries of the claims as marked on the ground, and inevitably many discrepancies will be noted. Prospectors make such terrible scriveners!

As with all recording systems involving real property, the "index" is the key to tracing titles to mining claims or finding any recorded document. Most western states maintain two basic types of indexes in their County Records: (a) a "Name Index" by which each recorded entry is indexed under the last name of each party to the transaction, such as the Grantor-Grantee Index, and (b) a "Tract Index" by which entries are indexed according to the land descriptions affected by the document.

The Name Index

All mining claim records are based solely upon the Name Index, and no effort is made to index mining claims according to the land description or "tract" in which the claim may be situated.

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Assuming that the County Mining Records are separately maintained, you will find a number of separate Name Indexes which will need to be consulted in tracing a mining claim title. And since each claim is a separate legal entity, your search of these indexes must be made for each claim.

Mining claim locations are indexed under the name of the claim and the name of each locator. Mining claims bearing the same generic name, such as "Lucky Strike Nos. 1-10" (ten separate claims) may be indexed as a single entry under the claim name "Lucky Strike", or may be separately indexed as 10 separate entries with the same name but a different number. Each separate location notice will be given its own entry number at the time of recording.

Affidavits of Annual Assessment Labor are generally also indexed under the name of the claim, but subsequent transactions, such as deeds and agreements, may not be separately indexed under the names of the claims involved, although these transactions will be indexed under the names of the respective parties involved.

Location Notices and Certificates. Many states provide that a copy of the original Notice of Location must be recorded within a specified period.⁴ Other states provide that the locator of a mining claim must record a Certificate of Location⁵ for each mining claim, or group contiguous claims, setting forth certain information in addition to the basic requirements for a Notice of Location. Certificates generally describe the "location work" done following location of the mining claim, and a few states combine the Notice of Location and the Certificate of Location into a single document.⁶

The basic contents of the Notice of Location are specified by federal law and include: (1) the name of the claim, (2) the date of location, (3) the name of each locator and (4) a description of the claim boundaries and a "tie" to some nearby permanent monument or natural landmark.⁷ Because claim descriptions and ties to landmarks in Notices of Location are generally quite vague, and sometimes inaccurate, there is seldom any effort on the part of the County Recorder's Office to index mining claims according to recognized land descriptions, such as sections, township, or range. This is true even in cases where the Notice or Certificate specifically identifies the section, township and range in which the claims are located.

Proofs of Assessment Labor. All of the western states provide⁸ that a claim locator shall record an Affidavit ("Proof of Labor") stating that the annual assessment labor required by federal law⁹ has been done, and identifying by name the claims which the work is intended to hold. The form and content of the Affidavit is generally specified by state law, and usually lists the name of the person doing the work and the claim owner(s).¹⁰

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Affidavits of annual assessment labor are indexed by the name of...