While my main interest in researching mineral surveys is to gather sufficient information to conduct a retracement/resurvey, I often find that my curiosity tends to wander into the historical setting and context of the original survey.?ÿ I end up being an amateur historian.?ÿ For example, I have conducted extensive research on an obscure General Land Office "policy".?ÿ This policy innocently began when the U.S. Surveyor General for Colorado, Mr. C.C. Goodale reacted to an admonition by the Hon. Commissioner in a Departmental letter dated June 17, 1899.
The Commissioner's letter was in regard to a mineral survey above the town of Georgetown, CO and that the Surveyor General was without authority to give credence to alleged errors in prior official surveys.?ÿ Mr. Goodale's immediate reaction was to prepare a circular instruction and send it to all U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors and applicants for mineral patents in Colorado.?ÿ Mr. Goodale included a brief statement about a Commissioner's letter followed by two paragraphs extracted from the Commissioner's letter.?ÿ The immediate impact of the circular is not known, nor when it spread to other states/territories.?ÿ I found evidence that by October 1899, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors in Colorado were fully complying with the instruction that patent description positions of prior official surveys were to be depicted on plats rather than their monumented positions.
The earliest instance I found discussing this policy and the vexatious problems it created was in the December 20, 1900 issue (Vol. XLII, No. 25) of The Mining Reporter.?ÿ
The Mining Reporter was a mining industry trade journal published weekly in Denver, CO.?ÿ It contained editorials, scientific articles, and mining news.?ÿ The authors were leading scholars, mining engineers, attorneys and businessmen in the mining industry.?ÿ The article quoted below first discusses the problems with the contract surveys overseen by the General Land Office, in particular the large errors, esp. in mountainous terrain of the surveys.?ÿ The gross errors in these contract surveys then manifested itself in determining the locus of mineral surveys since mineral surveys were required to be tied to a PLSS corner or U.S. Location Monument.?ÿ Finally, the article suggests that the Federal government create a Secretary of Mines that would supposedly be a better advocate for the mining industry.?ÿ In other words, the officials in the Department of the Interior (particularly the General Land Office) were patronage appointees with little or no understanding of the mining industry.?ÿ Therefore, a separate Federal department was required to protect the mining industry's interests.
Excerpt from The Mining Reporter, Vol. XLII, No. 25, December 20, 1900 (page 386)
?ÿPATENT SURVEYS
The Deputy U. S. Mineral Surveyors in certain parts of the State are having considerable trouble at present over some comparatively new rulings, of the Surveyor General's office. As we understand it, the root of the whole difficulty is to be found in the utterly careless and incor??rect way in which the government mineral lands are originally surveyed. The work is done by contract, and given out in blocks to the lowest bidder. The competition is close and keen. Consequently, the price at which it is let is always too small to permit of careful work. As a result, the government section corners in hilly country are never correctly placed. So universally true is this, that when one is found near where it should be, it is a matter of comment and surprise. The Surveyors General of every mountain State are well aware of this bad work, but are powerless to prevent it, because the laws compel them to have it done under the contract system. Of course, when later, mineral claim surveys come in from deputies, it is a heart breaking work to make them conform to the corners and courses of the township plats on file, in fact often an impossibility. The trouble seems at last to have culmin??ated in certain rulings, which the deputies find very diffi??cult to observe. One of these is to the effect that claim corners and monuments must hereafter take a secondary standing to courses and distances. While this is in direct opposition to all court rulings heretofore, the complaint against it mainly arises from the effort being made to en??force it as to claims already surveyed, and perhaps ap??proved.
Another ruling which is causing much trouble is to the effect that when a claim is cut into two parts by a survey already approved, it cannot be applied for under one location certificate, there must be a certificate for each part Again, that stakes must be placed on the ground at all intersections of the lines of the claim, with the lines of an approved survey.
Everyone who has had experience with the mineral Land Departments is aware of the fact that each year difficulties in the way of patent applications are becoming greater, and the delays more vexatious. Moreover, the ap??proval of a survey??no matter how correct??can no longer be secured within a reasonable time without the payment of extra fees. Much of the bad workings of these offices is due to the fact that the Surveyor General and his chief clerk rarely know even the rudiments of the business of land surveying either theoretically or practically, and still less about the laws that govern in such matters. The ap??pointments are purely political. And the Secretary of the Interior and his chief clerk are not any better posted as to the needs of the industry. The fact is that mining in the United States has for some years been of sufficient importance to warrant a special department in the gov??ernment. There should be a Secretary of Mines.
On October 16 1901, the Mono Fraction DOI Land Decision (31 L.D. 121) was issued by Secretary Ethan Allen Hitchcock.?ÿ Earlier decisions (unpublished) by the South Dakota Surveyor General and GLO Commissioner were appealed to the Secretary of the Interior. The Mono Fraction lode claim is the only published decision by the General Land Office clarifying this policy.?ÿ
Another historical source that can provide some context are the annual reports prepared by the Commissioner of the General Land Office.?ÿ In order to obtain a better understanding of the policy and that it extended to all of the western states, below are two quotes by the U.S. Surveyors General for Utah and South Dakota in their 1901 annual reports to the GLO Commissioner (included as appendices to the Commissioner's annual report).?ÿ The Utah Surveyor General, Edward H. Anderson also included the same language in his 1902 and 1903 reports to the Commissioner (to no avail).
Excerpt taken from the annual report prepared by Edward H. Anderson, Utah Surveyor General dated, June 30, 1901.
"The Department of Interior holds that courses & distances once incorporated into a patent must be recognized in all subsequent conflicting & adjacent surveys, notwithstanding actual conditions on the ground to the contrary. This means a perpetuation of the error, if any exist, in the former patented survey, and the deputy who makes the latter survey is compelled to falsify his returns to conform to such error. The courts hold that the monuments and markings on the ground govern.?
Quite a statement by Mr. Andersone that his deputies are required to falsify their field notes and plat in order to meet their duty to comply with all General Land Office instructions in force at the time of their survey work.
Excerpt taken from the annual report prepared by Frank A. Morris, South Dakota Surveyor General dated, July 8, 1901.
The recent ruling of the Secretary of the Interior....holds courses and distances once incorporated into a patent must be recognized in all subsequent, conflicting, or adjacent surveys, notwithstanding actual conditions on the ground to the contrary.?ÿ Words are not needed to show how supremely important it is, in view of this decision, that the correctness of courses and distances be known as an existing fact before allowing them to be incorporated into patents.
Back to The Mining Reporter article quoted above, it provided context to a paragraph in Chapter VI, Resurveys of John Meldrum??s 1980 guide, ??Mineral Survey Procedures Guide?.
??A word of caution in using other mineral survey ties: In Colorado, and presumably in other states, there was a period where the short ties to conflicting surveys were calculated through the section corner tie. Such calculated ties should not be used. This period is not exactly known, but it ran approximately from 1898 to April 28, 1904. If a report of other surveys was contained in the field notes, the ties were not calculated.?
The last sentence in the above quote refers to a new "Report" section that was added to the official field notes beginning in late August 1904.?ÿ The "Report" section includes descriptions of all found corners of prior official surveys and any material errors in the courses and/or distances of those prior official surveys.?ÿ The "Report" section was later changed to "Other Corner Descriptions".
During some research at the Denver National Archives I found a General Land Office quasi-contest case called the Lucky Strike Gold Mining Co. Quasi-Contest No. 2172.?ÿ It fully illustrates Meldrum's warning about calculated or fictitious ties.?ÿ (An aside:?ÿ There are multiple situations where proceedings before the General Land Office are classified as quasi-contests.?ÿ The situation applicable to the Lucky strike case occurred because of a survey-related decision by the Surveyor General where there are no contesting parties.?ÿ The matter is one between the Government and the appellant.)
I'll show the details of the Lucky Strike case in the next post.?ÿ It is the first case that I uncovered that definitively stated that the call(s) to a PLSS corner(s) is regarded by the General Land Office as superior to any "short tie" between two nearby mining claims.
The elder members of this forum will likely remember the old advertising acronym for Lucky Strike cigarettes,?ÿLSMFT.?ÿ For those too young to have seen cigarette ads on TV, it stand for Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco.?ÿ I have taken the liberty to abuse the acronym as applied to the Lucky Strike mining claim to mean, Lucky Strike Means Fictitious Ties.
The Lucky Strike and Good Record lode claims are located in T. 48 N., R. 1 E., New Mexico PM in Gunnison County, Colorado.?ÿ The township subdivision survey was completed in 7 days in 1879.?ÿ The original plat states that nearly 60 miles were run between Aug 24 and Aug 24, 1879.
As everyone can see from the plat the terrain was certainly amenable to surveying 9 miles each day. In this quasi-contest case, The Lucky Strike lode was tied to the South ?¬ Cor. and the Good Record lode to the West ?¬ Cor. of Sec. 10. There was also a tie between the two claims. This ??short? tie (blue line) did not agree with the ties to the section corners and the record courses and distances on the township subdivision plat. The Lucky Strike Gold Co. wanted to show the relationship based on the short tie.
There were four GLO Departmental "N" letters sent to the Colorado Surveyor General regarding this quasi-contest.?ÿ The first one issued on August 29, 1902 contains the particulars of the case.?ÿ It specifically states that the record information from the township subdivision survey combined with the record ties from the Good Record lode claim to the W1/4 Cor. and from the Lucky Strike lode claim to the S1/4 Cor. were to be regarded as superior to a short tie between the two mining claims and therefore the relative positions of the claims must be shown as depicted in the cartoon.?ÿ The total length of the record information is a mere 9350 ft, while the short tie between the two claims was a staggering 254 ft.?ÿ This style of logic reminds me of a similar [il]logic today whenever I hear a surveyor conducting a resurvey state, "I staked the deed description".
If someone is interested, I can attach the other three "N" letters (an "N" letter is from Division N of the General Land Office, which is the mining division).?ÿ Those letters outline an attempt to force the owner of the Good Record Lode Claim to surrender his patent, have a new survey conducted, and go through the application process for a patent once again.?ÿ That was regarded as the proper manner in which to fix the bad record of the Good Record Lode Claim.
Unsurprisingly, the Good Record owner refused to surrender his patent at which point the Land Office requested the Attorney General begin a legal proceeding to force the surrender of the Good Record patent.?ÿ The Act of April 28, 1904 should have made the issue moot.?ÿ The last Departmental letter, dated February 13, 1905 directed the Colorado Surveyor General, "to further report whether or not the mineral surveyor in making his investigation actually identified the Good Record claim on the ground and the relative positions of the other claims involved."?ÿ This action was deemed necessary in order to evaluate whether the Department of Justice should continue to prosecute the vacation of the patent!
A dependent resurvey was approved on August 3, 1944.?ÿ Applying the dependent resurvey record to the above problem indicates that the ties to the two Qtr. Cors. from the Lucky Strike and Good Record lode claims are in error.?ÿ That result confirms the general rule for dependent resurveys of mineral surveys (except for 1899 through 1904) that long ties to PLSS corners should only be used as a last resort when reestablishing the locus of a mining claim.
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For completeness, I have included the following attachments.
- Segregation Diagram prepared in March 1899 that shows several mining claims as indicated by the short ties between claims;
- Amended plat approved in September 1924 showing the positions and lottings;
- Plat of the Lucky Strike Lode; and
- Plat of the Good Record Lode.
Great subject and writing. I think you should submit this to American Surveyor.
Luckily I have never had to resort to ties while surveying mineral surveys, I am now sufficiently enlightened and I will be wary of their accuracy.?ÿ
I agree, worth reading and worth knowing.
I also agree that these writings should be preserved for future reading. I don't read American Surveyor much but that may be a good venue.
Keeping my eye out for the next episode 😉
Good job Gene (as always).
? ??ÿ
I don't have any plans to publish the Lucky Strike story.?ÿ I wrote this as an introduction to 14 articles published in The Mining Reporter from December 1903 through August 1904.?ÿ Those articles describe the General Land Office policy, possible remedies to that policy and the Act of April 28, 1904, which at the time was called the Teller Bill (sponsored by Senator Henry Teller of Colorado) and the Brooks Bill (sponsored?ÿ by Congressman Franklin Brooks of Colorado).?ÿ I am a featured speaker at the WFPS-AZ-NV-UT conference and will be giving a seminar on advanced mineral survey topics and the sections in Chapter X of the 2009 Manual devoted to resurveys of mineral surveys on February 22.?ÿ The above introductory material and 14 articles are part of my presentation and course materials.?ÿ I'm looking forward to seeing Leon and others at the Luxor!
To elaborate a bit on those 14 articles, the second article is called the Groves Case.?ÿ The "mining men of the West" were determined to see the General Land Office policy overturned and mounted a two-prong attack to attain their goal.?ÿ The Groves case was chosen to be the administrative appeal case.?ÿ In my opinion it was doomed for failure unless the Secretary of the Interior was willing to revisit his decision in the Mono Fraction Lode Mining Claim Land Decision (31 L.D. 121).?ÿ Since that case was decided by the Interior Secretary, the Honorable Commissioner of the General Land Office William Richards was without authority to overturn or amend that decision.?ÿ W.A. Richards was not your average-joe political appointee.?ÿ He was an experienced surveyor in both the rectangular PLSS and mineral surveys.?ÿ His brother was awarded the contract to survey the southern border of Wyoming and W.A. Richards was the person in charge of the field work.?ÿ He was also a U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor in the State of Colorado.?ÿ After his tenure as the GLO Commissioner, he was elected Governor of the State of Wyoming.
As I said, the Groves case was chosen as the case to administratively prosecute through the General Land Office.?ÿ It was selected for its impact, both for the egregious error depicted on the Groves plat and the emotional fact that the owner was a miner's widow without means!?ÿ It had all the elements of a cartoon melodrama with Snidely Whiplash playing the role of the men of the Land Office and poor Nell tied to the railroad tracks playing the role of the poor widow Alzina Dilley.?ÿ Because of the Herculean task, Dudley Do-Right?ÿ did double duty for the Colorado Mine Operators' Association (funding the effort) and the Colorado Society of United States Deputy Mineral Surveyors.?ÿ The mineral surveyor of the Groves Lode Claim was George R. DeNise who was President of the CSUSDMS.?ÿ The society was the first professional land surveyors society in Colorado.?ÿ The deputy mineral surveyors banded together because as a group they could express their outrage towards the GLO policy.?ÿ As individual mineral surveyors, they could not voice their displeasure at their superiors within the GLO.
Below are the text of the Groves case (attachment) published as a Christmas story on December 24, 1903 in The Mining Reporter.?ÿ Mr. A.W. Warwick, the editor of The Mining Reporter concluded his article with, "Right and justice must prevail."?ÿ In my research of the Groves case I discovered a copy of the, "Brief and Argument of Applicant" and inside the back cover is a sticker with, "Compliments of Geo. R. DeNise, 306 E. & C. Bldg., Denver, Colo."?ÿ
I have attached an excerpt from that brief.?ÿ This case was "worse" than the Lucky Strike quasi-contest case as there were approx. 27,000 ft. of traverse used by the GLO to show the relative positions of the Groves Lode to the W.C. Garlock Lode, when in reality they shared a common end line!?ÿ The Exhibit A map shows the reason for the error in the position of the Silver Coin.?ÿ The bearings in the original survey are magnetic, but interpreted as true when shown on the plat of the Groves Lode!
BRIEF AND ARGUMENT IN BEHALF OF APPLICANT.
In this brief and argument reference will fre??quently be made to a map herewith submitted, marked "Exhibit A," which is a copy of the map attached to the affidavits filed in this application. This map shows survey No. 13739, Groves lode, belonging to the ap??plicant, and also shows, in solid lines, survey No. 294, Silver Coin lode, and survey No. 5166, W. C. Garlock lode, as said lodes are staked upon the ground. It also shows, in dotted lines, the said Silver Coin and W. C. Garlock lodes as they are erroneously made to appear upon the approved plat of the Surveyor Gen??eral for Colorado in the case of said survey No. 13739, Groves lode.
Tract "A," shown in red upon said map, repre??sents the actual conflict existing between said Groves and said Silver Coin lodes as they are staked upon the ground.
Tract "B," shown in blue, represents the assumed conflict between said Groves and Silver Coin lodes, no part of which is of the real conflict as staked upon the ground; which tract applicant has occupied, devel??oped by extensive workings, and claimed for many years, and up to the present time, and which appli??cant desires to include within the patent for which she is applying.
Tract "M," shown in brown, represents a theo??retical and imaginary conflict, assumed by the Sur??veyor General to exist, between the W. C. Garlock and Groves lodes, no part of which tract is within the lines of the W. C. Garlock lode as the same is staked upon the ground; all of which tract applicant has occupied, developed by an expensive tunnel thereon, and claimed for many years, and up to the present time, and now desires to include within the patent for which she is applying.
The evidence submitted with this case is clear, explicit, without conflict, and shows:
That survey No. 294, Silver Coin lode is not de??scribed in the patent according to the stakes upon the ground, and that tract "A," above referred to, is the true and only conflict existing between said survey No. 294 and survey No. 13739, Groves lode.
That survey No. 5166, W. C. Garlock lode, is not in conflict with survey No. 13739, Groves lode.
Survey No. 294, Silver Coin lode, was patented in the year 1884. The description in the patent was erroneous, the courses called for being magnetic in??stead of true.
*?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *
Taking up again, this case of survey No. 13739, Groves lode, we are aware that under the present practice of the Department, an applicant in the posi??tion of the applicant in this case, could, through the courts, doubtless compel the relinquishment of the erroneous patents involved, subject to the issue of amended patents; this might be done in occasional instances, but in general, it would not prevent the mul??tiplication of errors under the present practice; in the majority of cases, applicants wishing to escape the uncertain expense and delay of going into court, either influence the deputy in the case to make an erroneous showing to meet the contingencies, or per??mit a harmful error to be incorporated in their pro??posed patent, rather than go into a contest at law with prior patentees, who will resent to the utmost of their ability, any attempt to compel a relinquish??ment of their original patent, for a patent which is junior in any sense to that under which they hold.
The applicant in this case is the widow of a miner and without means. To compel her to correct, through the courts, an error for which only the United States is responsible (through its agents) is a manifold wrong. This is especially true since there is an effect??ual remedy which has been in operation for many years and which has satisfactorily met these erroneous conditions up to the time of the issuance of the Hon??orable Commissioner's letter "N," under date of June 17, 1899, without the recourse to the courts which the present practice makes necessary. This applicant can not go into such a controversy as now provided, except at great sacrifice and cost. On the other hand, she can not afford to exclude the imaginary conflicts "B" and "M" above described, as they cover her most valuable improvements. Furthermore, by so doing, she would lose not only the said tracts, but also the actual and only conflict (being tract "A"), under the ruling of the courts of law, that where variation exists between courses and distances called for in the record, and monuments as placed upon the ground, courses and distances shall give way to the monuments as placed.
*?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ *
Counsel attribute the general error and falsifica??tion of the approved plat in the case of the Groves lode to the present uncertain practice now existing. It is well established that the exterior and sub-divis??ional surveys of mountainous townships are greatly at fault, and that connections from patented claims to the Public Survey are frequently in error, and it naturally follows that it is impracticable to proceed with the patenting of mineral claims as though theory and practice were synonymous. The township in??volved in this case was admittedly in error, and was subsequently suspended by the Honorable Commis??sioner's letter "E," under date of December 13, 1900, to the Gunnison Colorado Land Office. In view of this defective condition it seems manifestly wrong to determine the relative position of the contiguous sur??veys 5166 and 13739, W. C. Garlock and Groves lodes, by a rule which depends for its efficacy upon the correctness of the Public Survey.?ÿ?ÿ The Public Survey in this case was known to be wrong, and yet the Surveyor General followed the rule to a knowingly wrong conclusion. It was well established that survey No. 13739, Groves lode, actually abutted survey No. 5166, W. C. Garlock lode, as staked upon the ground, and that no conflict existed between the said lodes. A measurement of seventy-six feet determined this to be the case. Instead of using this simple fact, however, the Surveyor General, by a round-about method in??volving over 27,000 feet instead of 76 feet of measure??ment, adopts the knowingly wrong conclusion that the surveys are in conflict. He first adopts a measure??ment of 15,564 feet (between the section corners) which he knows to be in doubt; then he adopts a meas??urement of 6,230 feet from the northwest corner sec??tion 4, to determine the position of survey No. 5166. He then adopts a measurement of 5,233 feet from the northeast corner of section 16 to determine the posi??tion of survey No. 13739, Groves lode. Knowing his factor of 15,564 feet to be in serious doubt, he never??theless adopts it as a part of his round-about method, and concludes therefrom that the surveys, while known to abut, nevertheless do not abut, but materi??ally conflict, and proceeds to incorporate this errone??ous conclusion into a United States patent.
Edit to add:?ÿ Please note the original accessories found by Deputy DeNise for the north end line of the Silver Coin Lode Claim as shown on Exhibit A.?ÿ The legislative route ended up winning the day; at least it was the quicker route.?ÿ The true positions of the Silver Coin and W.C. Garlock lodes with respect to the Groves Lode were shown on the amended survey of the Groves Lode.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
The words "fully complying" should never be used with the GLO/BLM. The surveyor generals and chief cadastral surveyors have have and do override specific "rules" fairly often.
Even much newer mineral surveys have long ties that should not be used. I would have to be extremely desperate to use a tie more than 500 feet if there was no line of site. There usually is something better to use. Even the remains of a shaft would be better.
My comment in the first post is with regard to U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors fully complying with the instructions, et al. of the Surveyor General.
I found evidence that by October 1899, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors in Colorado were fully complying with the instruction that patent description positions of prior official surveys were to be depicted on plats rather than their monumented positions.
I didn't mean to imply that a U.S. Surveyor General had no discretionary authority.?ÿ I won't comment on whether a Cadastral Surveyor conducting a survey today under special instructions and assignment instructions has any discretion.?ÿ I would presume that when problems or issues emerge during the course of the survey, additional special instructions may be prepared.
?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ From my research, the U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors had a duty to perform their surveys according to the instructions issued by the U.S. Surveyor General for the District that they worked.?ÿ In addition, they were expected to be thoroughly familiar with the local mining customs, federal and state/territory statutes and regulations and decisions in force at the time of their survey work.?ÿ Below is the transmittal letter included in the "Instructions to U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors for the District of Colorado" by the U.S. Surveyor General for Colorado, Mr. E.C. Humprhrey that illustrates the point.
One last article from The Mining Reporter.?ÿ This article is entitled, "What the Government Is Actually Doing to Mineral Patents."?ÿ It was published in the February 4, 1904 issue.?ÿ The author was anonymous because at the time, he was an active U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor.?ÿ He practiced in the Cripple Creek Mining District in the 1890s and early 1900s.?ÿ Mr. Arthur J. Hoskin then obtained a M.S. in Mining Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and became a professor at his alma mater.?ÿ Contrast the misshapen section with strong bearings in the first figure with the nice square, albeit elongated section in the second figure and it is not surprising that the positions of the mining claims varies so much between reality in the first figure and theoretical musings in the second figure.?ÿ The last sentence again confirms that it is not a problem isolated to Colorado.
In?ÿThe Mining Reporter article I posted above there are two sketch maps of the mining claims in Sec. 4, T. 16 S., R. 69 W.?ÿ The first is a connected sheet that shows the monumented positions of the approved mineral surveys.?ÿ The second is a segregation diagram of the same section that instead shows the theoretical positions based upon ties to the record positions of the Qtr. Cors. and Sec. Cors. in Sec. 4, (an elongated section) along with the government lots.
Below is an image of a connected sheet prepared by j.v.m. in September 1940 (lower right).?ÿ John V. Meldrum began working in the Colorado Surveyor's General office in the mid 1930s and later was a U.S. Mineral Surveyor and the author of the 1980 pamphlet, "Mineral Survey Procedures Guide."?ÿ It is very similar to the older depiction shown in the first map in The Mining Reporter article.
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The next image is a segregation diagram prepared by T.S.W. on Jan. 23, 1902 and is the pretty Land Office map depicted in The Mining Reporter article.?ÿ The exterior boundary looks like the 1881 township subdivision map (GLO Records link below).
My previous two posts are an example of the problems faced by U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors and mining claimants throughout the western states.?ÿ In an article published the following week, George R. DeNise expounds on the problem in more general terms.?ÿ Mr. DeNise was the deputy involved in the Groves case posted earlier in this thread.?ÿ He was also the President of the Colorado Society of U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyors.?ÿ His article gives a good summary of the logical train wreck that occurred between 1899 and 1904 when pretty maps prepared from the patent descriptions and "hung" from points on perfectly square sections were held to be superior to the marked boundaries.?ÿ Not much different than today's practice of staking the deed instead of finding the evidence of the original marked boundary lines.
Excerpt from The Mining Reporter, Vol. XLIX, No. 6, February 11, 1904 (pp. 135-136)
THE MINERAL SURVEYS FROM THE STANDPOINT OF THE DEPUTY MINERAL SURVEYOR.
?ÿEditor Mining Reporter:
Dear Sir??Since the public has been so ably advised through the columns of the Mining Reporter of the recent decisions adverse to mineral patents, there has been con??siderable inquiry as to who is to blame for the doubtful value which now attaches to patents. The question is natural, and should be answered in justice to the deputy mineral surveyor who seems to have come in for most of the blame.
The diagrams presented in your issue of the 4th inst. serve at once to illustrate the gravity of the situation which confronts mining men, and, upon proper consideration, to relieve the said deputy of all blame therefor.
These diagrams show that in the course of patenting claims in this Cripple Creek land section, the deputies proceeded in strict compliance with law and tied the va??rious claims to the officially established monuments of section 4. There is no evidence of carelessness or in??competency in the official survey of any of the one hun??dred claims shown in the diagram; in fact, I have been assured that the work was uniformly well done. The ac??curacy and particularity of this work, however, does not save these claims from serious misconstruction which can only be straightened out in the courts; map "B," (segregation diagram in previous post) the offi??cial segregation diagram of this section, presents an en??tirely erroneous arrangement of the claims; each has been shifted, and assigned to a tract of land which it does not occupy.
Where is the fault? It is very plain. Diagram "A" (connected sheet in previous post) shows the actual position of the official corner stones which bound the section, as they are established on the ground; the figure presented by these boundary lines is anything but rectangular; it is one in which the opposite sides are not parallel, and the interior angles are not right angles. The government land surveyor, however, who subdivided township 16, in which this section occurs, reported to the government under oath that the section was estab??lished on the ground in rectangular form. This report, returned long before Cripple Creek had ever been thought of, constitutes the original and official record of the Wash??ington office, as to that land section.
In due course, Cripple Creek was discovered and deputy mineral surveyors scoured the country for section corners to which claims might be tied. They found these corners as they were officially set in the ground by the government land surveyor, and they tied their mineral surveys to them. They neither knew that the subdivisional survey had been carelessly made, nor could they have rectified it if they had known, as it would have been contrary to law. In the course of time, the surveyor general became in??formed of the actual position of every section corner in the district in its relation to every other corner. It has become apparent that not one of the fifty-three sections occupied by the Cripple Creek situation is laid down on the ground as it appears on the official maps of the de??partment; the sections, as they are thus established on the ground, are neither square nor rectangular. This is not the fault of the deputy mineral surveyor: he accepts and acts upon the situation in the field, not as it should be, but as it is. His oath of office binds him so to do.
We will all agree that it is not the fault of deputies that the Interior Department has seen fit to institute the now well established policy of disregarding official land marks, and construing all sections in accordance with the public survey reports, and determining the locus of patents thereby. A study of these diagrams will show that this is the source of the difficulty. It is not within the province of this article to discuss the merits of the present depart??mental system, or the difficult problems which have given rise to it. It is sufficient to say that the errors of the deputies of the present day are not a fractional part of the foundational causes of the present complications. It is doubtless true that in many cases errors have been made by deputies in running and reporting boundary and con??necting lines of patented claims; the frailties of the human mind are evidenced in the work of deputies as in the work of doctors and lawyers. This is particularly true as to the early patent surveys which were frequently made with a compass and sixty-six-foot chain, before the need of accuracy had been demonstrated to be an essential element of patent work. Some of these surveys are mar??vels of inaccuracy and must give rise to a harvest of litiga??tion under the present governmental system; these gen??eral conditions are not, however, justly chargable (sic) to the deputy mineral surveyor of to-day.
The only thing to be added is a word of charity and sympathy for the early land surveyor. "May he rest in peace," if it is possible to him under the circumstances. He was a pioneer, and did his work in rough pioneer fashion, little thinking, as he was pushing his party over the hills of Cripple Greek, that he was casting his care??less lines upon the face of what was to prove the greatest gold camp of modern times. He could not foresee that his scheme of results, in which errors of a quarter of a mile or so were matters unworthy of serious thought, would be subjected to the scrutiny of mineral surveyors whose standards of accuracy involved the skillful use of precise instruments and steel tapes graduated to the one-hundredth part of a foot.
What is true of the general inaccuracy of the land lines in the Cripple Creek district is true of every moun??tainous district of Colorado and every other state.
GEORGE R. DENISE.?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ
?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ Denver, Colorado, February 8, 1904.
Hello Gene. Very interested in receiving your other ??N?? letters. Please send to me.
You are correct. These same problems (and worse) are prolific throughout the various mining districts near prescott Arizona, in Yavapai County.
I wish that there was more discussion about US Mineral Surveys and the retracement thereof on this site, but I know that most "Land Surveyors" don't encounter them very often (unless, like Gene and I, that's about all that we do).
Loyal
