HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.beal/apex0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
[TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF MINING ENGINEERS.]
THE LAW OF THE APEX.
BY R. W. RAYMOND, NEW YORK CITY.
(Read at the Troy Meeting, October, 1883.)
Tims name is applied to the present mining law, as enacted in
1872 and since, to indicate its leading characteristic-in which it
differs from all previous mining laws of this or any other country.
The earlier act, passed in 1866, was practically the first attempt of
Congress to deal with the question of mining titles upon the public
domain. It was framed after nearly twenty years of acquiescence
on the part of the Government in the self-constituted tribunals, offi-
cials, rules, and customs of the mining districts. In its recognition
of these, and in several other particulars, the act of 1866 was open
to serious criticisms. It is the purpose of this paper, not to trace
the history of legislation on this subject, or show in detail what were
the faults of the earlier law, but rather, by a discussion of certain
aspects of the present law, to point out how great a revolution it has
effected in the rights of mining locators, and to indicate some of the
difficulties attending its application.
In the attempt to correct the vagueness of the act of 1866 an
entirely new element was introduced into the law, bringing with it
a new set of difficulties. Under the act of 1866 and the miners'
customs which it followed, the lode was the thing claimed and sub-
sequently acquired by patent. And the claim to a given number of
feet on the longitudinal course of the lode was rooted in a discovery
of any part of the lode in any part of the claim. (Extensions
could in many districts-perhaps universally-be located and claimed
on the strength of the discovery in the principal claim to which
they referred; but this is a point not essential to the present discus-
sion.) It was not necessary to find the outcrop or the upper edge of
a lode in order to lay a valid location upon it. An explorer, sink-
ing a shaft and intersecting a lode not already discovered and
claimed by another, could claim by that discovery the number of
feet along that lode which the local laws might permit (not exceed-
ing the maximum set by the United States statute) whether his sur-
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.beal/apex0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)