XXil INTRODUCTION. 
practice to avoid any knowledge of the points at issue, at least until their 
examinations are completed and their conclusions reached, in order that 
their opinions may be drawn solely from the facts of nature, with no possi- 
ble bias from such litigation. 
The suits in regard to Aspen mines, however, have been notorious as 
showing the relative advantages and disadvantages of the two methods of 
giving title to mining claims—i. e., according to what may be called the law 
of the apex, which is peculiar to the United States, or according to square 
locations, or vertical side-line boundaries, which is the practice in regard to 
all other land titles, and the method of granting mining titles that obtains 
among all other nations which have important mining industries. At the 
request of the writer Mr. D. W. Brunton, a leading mining engineer of 
Aspen, who has taken active part m most of the suits, has furnished the 
following brief statement of the points at issue in the more important 
mining suits at Aspen, and of the manner in which the disputes have 
respectively been decided. 
MINING SUITS. 
In November, 1883, the Spar mine, situated on the crest of what is known 
as Spar Ridge, on Aspen Mountain, had followed the contact between the blue 
limestone and the brown dolomite to and into the Washington No. 2, a mining 
claim lying immediately west of the Spar, and had uncovered considerable ore 
bodies in the Washington No. 2 claim. The Washington claimants were then 
engaged in mining ore within their surface boundaries, and the owners of the 
Spar brought an injunction suit in the circuit court of the United States at Den- 
ver to restrain the Washington claimants from mining ores within the end lines 
extended westerly of the Spar claim. The contention of the Spar claimants was, 
in substance, that they owned the apex or outcrop of a contact vein lying between 
the blue and brown limestones, which vein, on its dip and downward course into the 
earth, extended beyond the westerly side line of the Spar and into the territory 
of the Washington No. 2 claim. This contention was denied by the Washington 
No. 2 owners, who claimed that the ores of Aspen Mountain, or at least those 
included within the Washington No. 2 claim, did not occur in any true lode or 
vein, but that the same occurred in segregated masses, pockets, and impregna- 
tions, fortuitously distributed through the limestones forming the mass of the 
mountain, and that, therefore, the same did not come within the purview of the 
statute permitting the owner of the apex or outcrop of the vein to follow the same 
on its dip beyond his vertical side lines and into the territory of adjoining 
claimants. This was the original apex suit in Aspen, and was settled, in a few 
months and before any trial upon the merits was had, by the owners of the Spar 
purchasing the Washington No. 2 claim. 
