Gold off Freeways and highways and legality of public property

[BRIAN LARSON 0]

recently found some flour Gold off an public Highway in san diego county.

6 feet from the road...  is it legal to dig?  anyone know what public easements curtail?

[Bedrock Bob 3,960]

You can't dig on any public easement unless you get permission from the owner. It is private property just like every other acre out there except for BLM and National Forest.

[chrisski 821]

For the beginnings of prospecting, try going to my land matters.org, and see what the land status is, that is who manages the land.  If its BLM or Forest Service, its a maybe, others get complicated.  After that, Land Matters will tell you if there's any claims on that square mile of land.  If there is, they will give you a link to the county recorder, and then do an online search in the county records to narrow the claim location down from one mile to exactly where its at.

Lets say you've done all that and its open.  There's things that can stop gold mining like the area is a "Wilderness Area" of which there are a surprisingly a lot of those.  Those are some of the map layers mylandmatters lets you turn on.

That's the easy things I will tell you about research to do on your own.  Now you can call the land managing agency, and that gets iffy.  The odds are you will not find someone that wants to help a miner, and will give you the easy answer to their standpoint of, "No."  If the BLM manages it, you can locate the particular district and call them up, or do the same for the US Forest Service website.  In my two calls to the AZ state BLM office to file a claim, the first time I talked to the office manager who was super helpful, and the second time I got through to a guy who was answering my questions with incorrect answers.  Always a roll of the dice.  If the government tells you its OK to do something, but they're wrong, you're still liable.

The stuff above took me 8 months to learn how to stake a claim close to AZ.

 

[Dakota Slim 1,032]

I heard of a guy who pulled off I40 to take a pee and found a nice sunbaker. 

[chrisski 821]

I missed the part about 6' from the road.  Definitely an easement.  Would have to go outside the easement to take advantage of what I said.

[bc5391 100]

FYI   https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/who-owns-the-minerals-under-your-property.html

[fishing8046 332]

Just my two cents

This would also pertain to culverts. They are particularly popular to mine. That said there is not a public right of way police. I would say that this would go pretty much un noticed by any public law enforcement agency unless perhaps you were tearing the place up. 

[Stillweaver hillbelli 272]

Are you mining or just cleaning the riffles of that culvert ...wink, wink?

[Beeper Bob 88]

Always wanted to put on a ADOT jumpsuit and detect highway 95 by Quartzite.