closed case disposition?

[lord gold]

what does closed case disposition mean? and can you some how take over the claim if it is closed?????

thanks!!!

[chrisski]

I look on Land Matters and if the claim is closed, it may be available.  Still need to check for what I call the big 3: is it claimed in the BLM system, does the county have a record, and does the land status check out.  Land matters helps with the BLM and Land Status, but you still need to check the county for filings.  From my experiences Maricopa and Yavapai are about two weeks behind from the time the county receives the paperwork until the time the electronic records happen.

A couple of things to watch for:

1) Was the claim valid?  Many, Many people stake claims on invalid areas either by staking a claim over an invalid claim or over property the BLM does not control like state trust land or private property.  If someone let's the claim go because of this, it was a bad claim to start with and you can't file over it.  This will still show as a closed claim.  The BLM will take your money no matter what, and they are under no responsibility to check land status themselves.

2) I saw a really exciting claim on seasonal water in AZ that closed out recently.  As I checked this claim out, it was originally filed as a 160 acre claim with the county, but amended to 40 acres later on.  There was no record of which 40 acres of the 160 acres just closed.  Because it was on seasonal water on a gold bearing river, there were many, many claims in the area. To me, I did not feel it was worth the boots on the ground research.  Too many claims have no stake markers or no papers.  This lack of markings and papers is not always because of negligence on the claim owners part.  Often, a cow will walk over the marker and bushes later grow over it so it is hard to find, or someone else will wander through and take the only copy of the papers.