§26 Locators’ Rights of Possession and Enjoyment

Summary

People who staked mining claims on public land, plus their heirs or later owners, who had no conflicting claim on May 10, 1872, and who follow U.S. law and state or local rules that do not conflict with federal law, have the exclusive right to use and occupy the surface inside their claim lines and to own the mineral veins, lodes, or ledges below when the top of those mineral bodies lies inside the claim if you drop a vertical line down. If a vein slopes and goes outside the vertical sides of the surface claim, their ownership of the outside parts only reaches the portions between imaginary vertical planes dropped down from the claim’s end lines where those planes meet the vein. They cannot enter another person’s surface claim to get to parts of a vein that lie under that other surface.