Prospecting--Part 1 Checking Land Status

[chrisski]

Finding Open Ground to Prospect, Claim or Metal Detect

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Part 1 -- Check Land Status

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This section talks about areas eligible for prospecting.  This DOES NOT MEAN all this land is open and not claimed or withdrawn.

 

Forest Service land and Bureau of Land Management is open to prospecting unless its been withdrawn from use.  National Monument has been withdrawn.  Designated Wilderness Areas are extremely restrictive and no new claims can be staked and the only mining is on claims staked prior to 1984.

Prior to going to an area which is not a club claim of a club which I belong to prospect, stake a claim or metal detect, I need to make sure this area is land which the National Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is in charge of.  It’s not legal to prospect other areas like Bureau of Reclamation land or County land.  Private Property requires permission of the owner, who needs to have mineral rights.  Each state land is unique, like in Arizona its not that you can’t prospect state trustland, it’s just the rules are so difficult and expensive this is out of the reach of small miners.

First step is to go to a site like www.Mylandmatters.org or your state site like Arizona’s https://land.az.gov/maps-gis-0.

This map shows My Land Matters, Mining Claims and Arizona Land Status  of the Wickenburg area with the Land StatusàLAND Manager Layer and the Public Land Survey, Wilderness Areas, and Area of Critical Environment Concern overlays turned on by clicking the tools in the right.  Tan land is BLM and open to prospecting.  Not open to prospecting is blue which is State Trust Land.  Also closed to prospecting is the pink Local Government Parks and Recreation Land and any of area of the map without shading which is mostly private property.

Each of these sections in the public land survey system is approximately 1 nautical mile by 1 Nautical Mile, a huge area consisting of usually 2650 acres of land.

In the map above there are no Wilderness Areas or Areas of Critical Environment Concern.  Those wilderness areas have special rules if they are even allowed. 

The Areas highlighted by red bars is an example of a Wilderness areas around creeks in the Coconino National Forest in Arizona.  No new claims can be placed in those areas, but claims placed prior to Jan 12, 1984 can still continue.  Although prospecting is allowed, the rules can be restrictive or prohibitive. This PROSPECTING, MINING, AND SEARCHING FOR TREASURE IN WILDERNESS document written for the Coconino forest summarizes going into the wilderness areas in search of minerals. 

This is what mylandmatters.org puts on the website as the key for land status:

National Monument is not pictured in the key above. 

Turning on the special surveys reveals more data, which I have found to be patented claims, which for prospecting purposes are no go areas like private property.  To find more about these patented claims, I go to the Master Title PLATs.

The Master Title Plats were (MTP) available on the BLMs MLRS website is the official database I use to figure land actions.  The Black and white MTP drawn in books are currently being merged with the new MLRS database.  This is an example of an MTP which shows how big each section and subdivisions in acres.

Researching a patented claim

 With all the MLRS documents available for that patented claim:

The original 1872 Plat:

And the 1939 Supplement showing the map:

And finally zoomed in on the patented claim:

[Mike Furness]

Chrisski ... Njce Job so far! Should answer a lot of questions people have asked. Look forward to continued education here. Thank you for posting!

[Gilaoro2]

AMEN !

[chrisski]

There's a couple of things that can be improved. I want to Thank Clay from MyLandMatters.org in pointing them out.

 

The first step would be to check the Master Title Plats to find things such as withdrawals. This is the link to a tutorial from MyLand Matters (Reading a Master Title Plat (mylandmatters.org) and below is the MTP reading guide.

I also mislabeled a Survey Plat for a Master Title Plat(MTP).  The actual MTP for the area I pictured above is here, but notice the patented claim I mentioned is in section 28 which looking at it refers to a special plat:

Which is pictured here:

Where is this located?  In MyLandMatters.org of course in the Maps>Land Status >(Your Sate) and then clicking on the i (information) icon on the tool bar.

 

[sleepyjim]

This is awesome! Thank you for doing this.....

 

We need more of this for sure!

 

Jim