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 4,057]

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 854]

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 1,084]

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

[chrisski 854]

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 340]

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 324]

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

[Beeper Bob 90]

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

[beatup 215]

I had that happen to me i pulled off the side of 85 between Gila Bend  and Buckeye to take a leak and looked down and saw a gold nugget  when i picked it up you could see it was shaped like a butterfly , it was ground flat on the back side , near as i could tell maybe a piece of jewelry that fell off or out of a mount it was just under 1/4 oz.

[Stillweaver hillbelli 324]

Why not contact the county road department about their adopt a highway program

[Electrician 29]

I would love to get into the road cuts along US60 between Morristown and Wickenburg

[Stillweaver hillbelli 324]

https://adot.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=69074b6e643c46c4a6a7964703e7e923

[GeoJack 833]

I looked this up after a confrontation under a small bridge. $500 fine and they can take your equipment for any prospecting/digging on the side of any county road / highway etc. This was El Dorado county, Calif.

This includes bridges. Looked it up after speaking with CalTrans, Sheriff, CHP, DOT etc. Nobody knew anything.

[chrisski 854]

On 12/21/2020 at 6:27 PM, Electrician said:

I would love to get into the road cuts along US60 between Morristown and Wickenburg

 

I’d heard about gold that hides in the drainage pipes that run under the road.  I paid to get access to a claim in a gold producing area, and that drainage pipe I was hoping to remove material from under that road was clean as a whistle, so apparently that technique is not a secret.  Don’t know if it’s a productive technique, but seemed popular technique.

[Stillweaver hillbelli 324]

1 hour ago, chrisski said:

 

I’d heard about gold that hides in the drainage pipes that run under the road.  I paid to get access to a claim in a gold producing area, and that drainage pipe I was hoping to remove material from under that road was clean as a whistle, so apparently that technique is not a secret.  V

I wonder if the intake was at grade, or above?

If it  was above, it would, naturally, act as a trap for gold, upstream of the  culvert intake.  

It would also allow for the trapping of other sediments and detritus, thus keeping the runoff as clean as possible. It sounds like  great public service project for a culvert  with a buried intake.

Create a sedimentation basin a few feet out from the intake, scaled to the demands on that particular     drainage. Make sure to be at least 6" below the level of the intake.

The boundary of the created basin is nothing more than excavated rocks and soil from the basin.

If done on a large level, over the landscape(rainbars, swales, multiple rock dams in gullysit mitigates runoff.

There's your Scout project for ya.

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Stillweaver hillbelli

[Stillweaver hillbelli 324]

The Green New Deal is all about saving the environment... what could be more green than reducing pollution in downstream waters?

Adopt-a-Culvert!... Sedimentation basins for all!. Stop trash from polluting rivers, lakes and the world oceans.

Naturally, ahem, the excavating required  to drop the grade below the level of the intake to the culvert, shall be needing, ahem, disposal.