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Show 720 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT the principal features of the act148 should be examined briefly. In the opening section, the act sweep-ingly proclaims that "the mineral lands of the public domain ... are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and occupation" subject, however, to the local customs or rules of the mining districts not in conflict with the laws of the United States. Although the wording does not necessarily authorize the removal of ore prior to a patent, this privilege does seem implicit in other portions of the act. The announced policy of "free mining" has continued to the present day except where it has been modified by statutes providing for withdrawals or for leasing of specific minerals (particularly oil and gas). The section seems broad enough to authorize entry for placer as well as lode mining, although subsequent sections are clearly restricted to veins or lodes. The second section authorizes the patenting of lode mining claims containing veins bearing gold, silver, cinnabar (quicksilver ore), or copper if the claimant has occupied the land and improved it according to the miners' customs and has expended not less than $1,000 in actual labor or improvements. The enumeration of certain metals probably would not exclude other metalliferous lands.149 To secure a patent, the claimant must file with the local land office a diagram "so extended laterally" as to comply with local mining customs. The patent grants the "mine, together with the right to follow such vein or lode with its dips, angles, and variations, to any depth" although it may enter adjoining land. Although neither of the first two sections expressly refers to locations made prior to the effective date of the act, such earlier claims were often permitted to go to patent, "M4Stat. 251 (1866) . U9Cf. Northern Pacific Ry. v. Soderberg, 188 U.S. 526,531-32 (1903). and the cases indicate that the statute retroactively validates such claims.150 Section 3, in describing the procedure for obtaining a patent, stipulates a price of $5 per acre with the title including no more than one vein or lode which shall be named in the patent (no secondary veins). This provision, when read in conjunction with Section 2, would seem to indicate that a patent was primarily intended to grant title to the lode or vein rather than to any particular quantity of the surface. Section 4, dealing with claims prior to patent, limits such claims to 200 feet "along the vein" for each locator with an additional vein for the discoverer "with the right to follow such vein to any depth, with all its dips, variations, and angles" together with a reasonable quantity of the surface for working the mine. This section fails to indicate what steps must be taken to perfect an unpatented claim. Customary mining law is loosely incorporated into the statute, and the only restrictions on claims seem to relate to length (which was probably not sufficient to justify large investments) , the requirement of improvement and the vague reference to "discovery." Moreover, the statute makes no provision for surface boundary lines although under Section 2 something of this sort must have been contemplated in the requirement that a diagram be filed prior to a patent. In Mining Co. v. Tarbet,151 the Supreme Court held that the act assumes that locations will be made along the vein with straight end lines drawn across the strike (course of the vein). (This was standard practice in California before the act) ,152 The locator's extralateral rights, it was said, are determined by the patent which 130 See, e.g., Ames v. Empire Star Mines Co., 17 Cal.2d 213, 110 P.2d 13, cert. den. 314 U.S. 651 (1941). 131 98 U.S. 463 (1878). 152 See Argonaut Min. Co. v. Kennedy Min. & Mill Co., 131 Cal. 15, 63 Pac. 148, 153, aff'd 189 U.S. 1 (1903) . |