There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of the role of the BLM in relation to mining claims and mining. I thought maybe a little history of how the BLM came to be involved in mining might help understanding of just what the BLM is and why their role in mining is so misunderstood. A lot of this was in response to a conversation on another forum but I thought it might be good to put this here and stimulate a little discussion about how we get tangled up in all this agency stuff just by going out and prospecting. I've only really addressed the role of the BLM in relation to mining here. The BLM has many different hats to wear so please don't take my comments to be the whole story.
I hope we keep this discussion civil. Politics and political opinions are fine with me but they are off limits on this forum. Please try to respect our generous hosts here at Tnet and keep it civil and on point. The BLM has caused a lot of anger and confusion for miners through the years but please remember that the BLM is really just a bunch of ordinary people doing a job for pay. Some are very good at what they do and some... well we just have to learn to get along with our neighbors if we want a nice neighborhood. Right?
The primary duty of the BLM is to maintain a current and historical timeline of public land status. They do this through the General Land Office (GLO) which has been around since 1812. GLO was bundled together along with the Federal Grazing Service in 1946 to form the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM was not formed by an Act of Congress it was put together as an administrative bureau by the executive to assist in the duties of the Department of the Interior. It was an internal management reorganization and renaming only.
It wasn't until 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that Congress gave the BLM any power beyond those already given to the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. The BLM is relatively new in American history and to this day it remains a Bureau of the Department of the Interior (DOI). The DOI is an executive (Presidential) department created to carry out the laws as passed by Congress. No executive department can create laws - they can only enforce laws passed by Congress.
The BLM complained to their boss, the DOI, for many years that they just didn't have enough resources to check the County Recorder for mining claims every time they were asked by their boss to approve a right of way for a road or to facilitate the sale of sand and gravel etc. There were a lot of things the BLM was asked to do with the public lands that they couldn't legally do if there was a mining claim where they wanted to do it. Unfortunately the BLM often neglected to do this part of their job. This is where a lot of the historical conflict with miners and mining started.
For years the BLM would barge ahead with a new road or stock tank or powerline and get sued by the claim owner who didn't have a clue what was happening until a bulldozer showed up and started destroying their mining works. The claim owners would sue, and of course win. The DOI would get a rash from Congress because they weren't doing their job and it was costing a boatload of money to pay for the damages. The DOI would give the BLM a rash and the BLM would complain "we just didn't have enough resources..." Congress would approve more money and the whole cycle would start again.
This situation only got worse over time as the 1955 Surface Materials Act promised to bring in a lot more money as long as the BLM did their job. By the 1960's things were really out of hand. The BLM was paying out more in court judgements than they were bringing in through grazing, leasing and sales. The court judgements and resulting bills were mounting. It wasn't just the miners but the groups that had paid for a right of way or grazing improvements that were suing for their losses too. The BLM was getting a lot of push back from miners and land users.
Congress got tired of throwing more money at a problem that wasn't getting fixed. By the mid 1970's the proposal of pretty much closing the public lands to the people and putting them in the somewhat, sometimes capable hands of the DOI and Forest Service became the current political fad. Congress was set to eliminate any possibility of the people getting any more public land and go to a system of leasing and sales. Welcome to the 70's and the advent of the modern environmental movement.
There was just one problem with the plan. Mining. Mining made the country rich. The scheme whereby the the miner footed the entire bill of prospecting, doing discovery work, developing the deposit, mining, refining, transporting and marketing the valuable mineral of the public lands has worked really well. Get the little guy to take the risk and if he was successful everyone benefits from the jobs and wealth created. If the little guy wasn't successful and the mine was a bust only the miner took the financial hit. Sweet deal for the public.
Mining was a significant driver of the economy and if mining rights and patents were removed from the public lands the miners had no incentive to continue looking for undiscovered deposits. Taking all the risks and fronting all the capital and labor on the gamble of discovering a paying deposit just wasn't going to fly if the miner then had to pay for the minerals he had discovered.
So a master plan was put into effect. The public lands in the future would no longer belong to the people as they had since 1803. All the opportunities for citizens to get a piece of the public land pie would be abolished and the Federal government would take over ownership of the public lands from the people. There would be no more patents or settlement on the public lands.
This scheme was sold as preserving the lands for future generations but the real effect was to lock future generations out of the possibility of benefiting from the public lands as their ancestors had always done. The new policy was preservation at any cost. Taxes were needed to pay for preservation so the lands that had made us a wealthy nation would be a net expense into the future instead of a net benefit.
The people of this nation paid for every square inch of the public lands many years ago. That payment was in the form of huge quantities of mined gold paid individually for land - two million ounces alone for the Louisiana Purchase and Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo and much more for Alaska, Gadsden Purchase etc. as well as millions of lifetimes of labor to improve homesteads and millions of men's blood to take the land through war. The people themselves, my ancestors and possibly yours, paid for these public lands. This wasn't done through taxation but though wars and sinking funds financed by Federal land sales to citizens. For many years these citizen land purchases provided a good chunk of the Federal budget.
With one fell swoop in 1976 all that was thrown out the door with this one statement of policy that is the opening line of the FLPMA.
Not yours anymore. It's the government's now unless the government wants to sell it. That simple. Or was it? There was still that sticky bit about mining being so valuable to the national interest. So Congress in their wisdom made one exception to taking the public lands from the people. The Mining Grant was to be preserved. Miners could still prospect, claim, mine and patent the public lands. This was the only freedom to take the public lands by claim of right and patent preserved out of nearly 50 other ways that had been valid just the day before. Only miners were allowed a little bit of the freedom the public had earned and enjoyed for nearly 200 years.
But... But... But the BLM said "we just don't have enough resources..." and an exception was made to that freedom. The BLM got the right to be informed directly by the claim owner that there was a current claim on the public land. If they didn't get the annual informational notice they were allowed to ignore the claim for planning purposes and the miner could not sue over damages. Instead of having to look up the public record like every other person and government employee the BLM was now entitled to a personal signed informational notice as to the status of every mining claim every year.
Then there was the fact that with the passage of the FLPMA the law now said the public lands had to be protected from undue and unnecessary damage. Part of that whole preservation for the future thing the enviros wanted. So the BLM and the Forest Service were given the duty to keep mining from damaging any more of the surface stuff than was necessary to accomplish mining of their located valuable mineral deposit. Congress might want to sell off those surface resources some day.
Two changes to the mining law - that's all that happened with the FLPMA. Oh... and the BLM finally got recognized as an official agency of the Federal government after 30 years of being nothing but a letterhead. They were still a Bureau of the DOI but they actually got assigned a job by Congress that wasn't already assigned to the General Land Office or the Grazing Service.
I've tried to stick to the facts in this little history. I left some stuff out and concentrated on some stuff more than other stuff but what I wrote is fact you can take to the bank. Now for my two cents of opinion (your bank will not deposit this check):
Miners are the last free men on the public lands. Miners have a right to the public lands that no other citizen has. That's a big honor and in my mind a big responsibility. The ability to make a claim of right to the public lands used to be common knowledge and practice among the people of this nation. It's more than likely the land your houses and businesses are on are former public lands located and patented by our ancestors. All other citizens have lost the ability to work hard, improve the land and claim it for their own. Miners can still do that.
Miner's can have their right to the Public Land taken away by Congress just as the rest of the citizens did. If modern miners are fooled into believing their claim of right is the same as every other use of the public lands they will end up acting as if their unique rights to the public lands are subject to the same rules as a lease or sale. Believing that the BLM is in charge of approving a mining claim is just the tip of this dangerous perception shift.
The more we misunderstand our unique place on the people's land the more we encourage others to treat mining as something subject to the popular whim. We see this already with public education in California and elsewhere teaching fake history like "hydraulic mining was banned" (never happened) or "miners ruined the land" (less than .02% of the public lands have been mined).
If we can't educate ourselves about our unique rights we might well be consigning a whole nation to ignorance of the critical and ongoing role of mining in this nation. That would be a great loss in my opinion. I hope this little bit of history will help others to look into the actual extent of the freedom inherent in the mining grant. If we can learn this stuff there might be a chance of educating others and getting some of that lost freedom (and property) back into the people's hands.
Educate Yourself and Prosper!
Heavy Pans
I hope we keep this discussion civil. Politics and political opinions are fine with me but they are off limits on this forum. Please try to respect our generous hosts here at Tnet and keep it civil and on point. The BLM has caused a lot of anger and confusion for miners through the years but please remember that the BLM is really just a bunch of ordinary people doing a job for pay. Some are very good at what they do and some... well we just have to learn to get along with our neighbors if we want a nice neighborhood. Right?
The primary duty of the BLM is to maintain a current and historical timeline of public land status. They do this through the General Land Office (GLO) which has been around since 1812. GLO was bundled together along with the Federal Grazing Service in 1946 to form the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The BLM was not formed by an Act of Congress it was put together as an administrative bureau by the executive to assist in the duties of the Department of the Interior. It was an internal management reorganization and renaming only.
It wasn't until 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that Congress gave the BLM any power beyond those already given to the General Land Office and the Grazing Service. The BLM is relatively new in American history and to this day it remains a Bureau of the Department of the Interior (DOI). The DOI is an executive (Presidential) department created to carry out the laws as passed by Congress. No executive department can create laws - they can only enforce laws passed by Congress.
The BLM complained to their boss, the DOI, for many years that they just didn't have enough resources to check the County Recorder for mining claims every time they were asked by their boss to approve a right of way for a road or to facilitate the sale of sand and gravel etc. There were a lot of things the BLM was asked to do with the public lands that they couldn't legally do if there was a mining claim where they wanted to do it. Unfortunately the BLM often neglected to do this part of their job. This is where a lot of the historical conflict with miners and mining started.
For years the BLM would barge ahead with a new road or stock tank or powerline and get sued by the claim owner who didn't have a clue what was happening until a bulldozer showed up and started destroying their mining works. The claim owners would sue, and of course win. The DOI would get a rash from Congress because they weren't doing their job and it was costing a boatload of money to pay for the damages. The DOI would give the BLM a rash and the BLM would complain "we just didn't have enough resources..." Congress would approve more money and the whole cycle would start again.
This situation only got worse over time as the 1955 Surface Materials Act promised to bring in a lot more money as long as the BLM did their job. By the 1960's things were really out of hand. The BLM was paying out more in court judgements than they were bringing in through grazing, leasing and sales. The court judgements and resulting bills were mounting. It wasn't just the miners but the groups that had paid for a right of way or grazing improvements that were suing for their losses too. The BLM was getting a lot of push back from miners and land users.
Congress got tired of throwing more money at a problem that wasn't getting fixed. By the mid 1970's the proposal of pretty much closing the public lands to the people and putting them in the somewhat, sometimes capable hands of the DOI and Forest Service became the current political fad. Congress was set to eliminate any possibility of the people getting any more public land and go to a system of leasing and sales. Welcome to the 70's and the advent of the modern environmental movement.
There was just one problem with the plan. Mining. Mining made the country rich. The scheme whereby the the miner footed the entire bill of prospecting, doing discovery work, developing the deposit, mining, refining, transporting and marketing the valuable mineral of the public lands has worked really well. Get the little guy to take the risk and if he was successful everyone benefits from the jobs and wealth created. If the little guy wasn't successful and the mine was a bust only the miner took the financial hit. Sweet deal for the public.
Mining was a significant driver of the economy and if mining rights and patents were removed from the public lands the miners had no incentive to continue looking for undiscovered deposits. Taking all the risks and fronting all the capital and labor on the gamble of discovering a paying deposit just wasn't going to fly if the miner then had to pay for the minerals he had discovered.
So a master plan was put into effect. The public lands in the future would no longer belong to the people as they had since 1803. All the opportunities for citizens to get a piece of the public land pie would be abolished and the Federal government would take over ownership of the public lands from the people. There would be no more patents or settlement on the public lands.
This scheme was sold as preserving the lands for future generations but the real effect was to lock future generations out of the possibility of benefiting from the public lands as their ancestors had always done. The new policy was preservation at any cost. Taxes were needed to pay for preservation so the lands that had made us a wealthy nation would be a net expense into the future instead of a net benefit.
The people of this nation paid for every square inch of the public lands many years ago. That payment was in the form of huge quantities of mined gold paid individually for land - two million ounces alone for the Louisiana Purchase and Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo and much more for Alaska, Gadsden Purchase etc. as well as millions of lifetimes of labor to improve homesteads and millions of men's blood to take the land through war. The people themselves, my ancestors and possibly yours, paid for these public lands. This wasn't done through taxation but though wars and sinking funds financed by Federal land sales to citizens. For many years these citizen land purchases provided a good chunk of the Federal budget.
With one fell swoop in 1976 all that was thrown out the door with this one statement of policy that is the opening line of the FLPMA.
Not yours anymore. It's the government's now unless the government wants to sell it. That simple. Or was it? There was still that sticky bit about mining being so valuable to the national interest. So Congress in their wisdom made one exception to taking the public lands from the people. The Mining Grant was to be preserved. Miners could still prospect, claim, mine and patent the public lands. This was the only freedom to take the public lands by claim of right and patent preserved out of nearly 50 other ways that had been valid just the day before. Only miners were allowed a little bit of the freedom the public had earned and enjoyed for nearly 200 years.
But... But... But the BLM said "we just don't have enough resources..." and an exception was made to that freedom. The BLM got the right to be informed directly by the claim owner that there was a current claim on the public land. If they didn't get the annual informational notice they were allowed to ignore the claim for planning purposes and the miner could not sue over damages. Instead of having to look up the public record like every other person and government employee the BLM was now entitled to a personal signed informational notice as to the status of every mining claim every year.
Then there was the fact that with the passage of the FLPMA the law now said the public lands had to be protected from undue and unnecessary damage. Part of that whole preservation for the future thing the enviros wanted. So the BLM and the Forest Service were given the duty to keep mining from damaging any more of the surface stuff than was necessary to accomplish mining of their located valuable mineral deposit. Congress might want to sell off those surface resources some day.
Two changes to the mining law - that's all that happened with the FLPMA. Oh... and the BLM finally got recognized as an official agency of the Federal government after 30 years of being nothing but a letterhead. They were still a Bureau of the DOI but they actually got assigned a job by Congress that wasn't already assigned to the General Land Office or the Grazing Service.
I've tried to stick to the facts in this little history. I left some stuff out and concentrated on some stuff more than other stuff but what I wrote is fact you can take to the bank. Now for my two cents of opinion (your bank will not deposit this check):
Miners are the last free men on the public lands. Miners have a right to the public lands that no other citizen has. That's a big honor and in my mind a big responsibility. The ability to make a claim of right to the public lands used to be common knowledge and practice among the people of this nation. It's more than likely the land your houses and businesses are on are former public lands located and patented by our ancestors. All other citizens have lost the ability to work hard, improve the land and claim it for their own. Miners can still do that.
Miner's can have their right to the Public Land taken away by Congress just as the rest of the citizens did. If modern miners are fooled into believing their claim of right is the same as every other use of the public lands they will end up acting as if their unique rights to the public lands are subject to the same rules as a lease or sale. Believing that the BLM is in charge of approving a mining claim is just the tip of this dangerous perception shift.
The more we misunderstand our unique place on the people's land the more we encourage others to treat mining as something subject to the popular whim. We see this already with public education in California and elsewhere teaching fake history like "hydraulic mining was banned" (never happened) or "miners ruined the land" (less than .02% of the public lands have been mined).
If we can't educate ourselves about our unique rights we might well be consigning a whole nation to ignorance of the critical and ongoing role of mining in this nation. That would be a great loss in my opinion. I hope this little bit of history will help others to look into the actual extent of the freedom inherent in the mining grant. If we can learn this stuff there might be a chance of educating others and getting some of that lost freedom (and property) back into the people's hands.
Educate Yourself and Prosper!
Heavy Pans
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