History of public land law development

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722 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT that with the exhaustion of surface mines, miners found it necessary to build shafts and tunnels in order to get at the gold gravels deep within the "bowels of the mountains"-to borrow an expression popular with legislators at the time. This situation, it was said, imposed greater land requirements. Under the 1866 Act there were no restrictions on the area which might be included in the location of a placer claim, and the size of such claims were determined by the rules and regulations of the miners (often not to exceed 40 acres) .165 The principal debate over Sargent's bill involved the amount of land which should be paten table under a placer claim. Julian, of course, nominally opposed the measure, suggesting that it was comparable to putting new wine into an old bottle.166 If the principal objective of the Sargent bill was to increase the size of placer claims in order to encourage investment, its author must have experienced mild shock when Senator Cole, also of California, offered an amendment in the Senate reducing claims to 10 acres, contending that the 160-acre provision would encourage exploitation and speculation by "moneyed men."167 Senator Stewart surprisingly agreed, after first arguing a diametrically opposite position. After several other minor amendments, the Senate passed the House bill.168 The House, as a matter of principle, immediately rejected the amendments, and a conference committee was appointed. Its report is printed in full in the Congressional Globe.169 Senator Cole, a member of the committee, steadfastly refused to sign the report on the ground that it permitted the miner to acquire too much land. When Senator Stewart called the compromise bill up again for discussion, he 168 Cong. Globe, 41st Cong., 2d Sess., 314, 316-19 (1869). 199 Id. at 2029. lw/d. at 3054-55. 188/d. at 4404. lw/d. at 4918. made a most significant statement on the purpose of the bill: ... it proposes to extend the principles of the preemption law, so far as possible, consistent with the mining laws, for the purpose of giving the people upon the worked-out mines in California and in the Territories, where they have had placer mines, an opportunity for buying mineral lands, which they need more for agricultural than mineral purposes. These lands are exhausted for mineral purposes, and this bill is intended to allow those people to get homes, and to get titles to the lands.170 Stewart was the first to suggest that the bill was not actually necessary to stimulate the mining industry to make more extensive investments. Instead, it was an outright concession to the California miner who had been a failure and who was now to be rewarded with title in fee so that he might put his claim to some agricultural use if possible. Others made the sensible suggestion that if this was the purpose of the bill the land should be sold under the agricultural land statutes.171 To today's lawyer it may come as something of a surprise that so important a part of the present mining law originated in this fashion. Under the new amendment to the mining law, placer claims included "all forms of deposit, excepting veins of quartz, or other rock in place."172 In 1870, at least, miners probably used the term "placer" to describe superficial deposits (chiefly auriferous gravels) in the beds of ancient rivers or valleys.173 Through oversight, the new amendment did not restrict placer claims to valuable deposits. Placer locations were limited to not more than 160 acres for any one person or association of persons, although it was later held that a patent to a placer claim could be issued for more than 160 acres where adjoining claims had 170 Id. at 5043. 171 Id. 17816 Stat. 217 (1870). 173 See United States v. Iron Silver Min. Co., 128 U.S. 673 (1888); Moxon v. Wilkinson, 2 Mont. 421, 424 (1876).