216 FOREST OUTINGS 



Many mining operations today are producing wealth to the economic 

 benefit of the Nation, and serving locally as the backbone of thriving 

 communities. It is desirable to encourage bona fide and well-ordered 

 developments of the mineral resources on the public lands. The fraudulent 

 mining claim is a thorn in the flesh of the legitimate mining industry. It 

 destroys confidence in mining as an investment and brings legitimate 

 development into disrepute. Fraudulent claims have been a constant source 

 of public irritation and annoyance and the industry as a whole gets the 

 blame. 



PRIMITIVE MINERS dug for wealth on this continent before the coming of 

 the white man. The early Spanish explorers and the Jesuit priests recorded 

 the use of gold and copper among the Indians. But it was the newcomers 

 not the natives who were gold crazy, hungry and thirsty for gold. Gold 

 was to be found here easily in the streams and "among the roots of trees," 

 wrote Columbus, reporting to the Court of Spain. Gold rushes, almost as 

 much as soil rushes, helped push and draw succeeding waves of migration 

 westward. 



Such laws and ordinances as there were favored mining and once we 

 set up a Republic here, that tendency persisted. Our first State and National 

 mining laws were nothing more than local rules influenced to some extent 

 by customs harking back to periods of French, English, Spanish, or Mexican 

 jurisdiction. Essentially, they were little more than codes established by 

 local usage designed wholly to protect miners' rights in public lands appro- 

 priated by them and to meet the exigencies of the times. Land in the 

 mineralized sections of the Western States then had little, if any, recognized 

 worth other than for mineral values, and the codes or local rules revolved 

 around protection of mineral mining rights exclusively. 



The various early Congresses of the United States enacted legislation 

 from time to time dealing with mining. The first of these was the Act of May 

 20, 1785, which set up the rectangular system of land surveys and made 

 certain provisions dealing with minerals. Various other acts were passed, 

 but the first general mining act of importance was the act of July 26, 1866, 

 known as the Lode Law. This was later supplemented by the general law 



