The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is responsible for recording mining claims on federal lands. GeoCommunicator contains information on some of the unpatented active and closed mining claims located on federal lands including claimant name, approximate location, and other applicable information from the National Integrated Land System (NILS). Data from Legacy Rehost 2000 (LR2000) Mining Claim Record System (www.blm.gov/lr2000) is processed in NILS where the geometry for the claim is automatically created and stored in the NILS geodatabase. Mining claims are recorded and mapped 'nominally' to the nearest quarter section. The claim is located 'somewhere' in the quarter. The exact location is not mapped or recorded in the BLM's automated systems. To see the actual location map visit the public room where the case file of the mining claim is recorded. Most of the mining claims from LR2000 are in GeoCommunicator, but not all. Please read the data disclaimer.
LR2000-Mining Claim Recordation System is a text-based case recordation system for recording information on unpatented mining claims in the U.S. excluding Alaska. Mineral Patent information is maintain with the Case Recordation and the Status System in LR2000 and this data is display in GeoCommunicator under the CASES folder. Additional information about patented mining claims or any other federal land patents issued prior to 1982 may also be found on the Federal Land Records Patent Site or LR2000. |
Mining Claim Density for active claims is being displayed at three levels: Township, Section, and Quarter-section. If we don't have the land descriptions at the section or quarter section level than the density for that level can't be displayed. The density is based on data directly from the LR2000 system. Therefore if a mining claim can't be displayed in GeoCommunicator it still will be counted in the density numbers. The density is a good representation of the where mining claims are located. The label will indicate the number of claims in the density area. Remember that a mining claim can occur in more than one quarter, so a claim can be counted more than once. For example, if a claim is located in 2 quarters it will be counted in both quarters, but it will be counted only once at the section and township level.
From GeoCommunicator, you can run a township geographic report that will allow you to get a report of all of the mining claims in the township. You can compare this to the display in GeoCommunicator to determine if there are valid claims in the area.
Information on Alaska records are not available from this site. For more information, go to the Alaska State Office website. The original documents including patents (some are available at the Federal Land Patent Records website), deeds, leases, public land orders, and case files are not available over this website but can be viewed in the BLM Information Access Centers.
The Federal Land Patent Records Website provides access to Federal land conveyance records for the Public Land States. They also provide image access to more than two million Federal land title records for Eastern Public Land States, issued between 1820 and 1908. Images of Serial patents (land titles issued between 1908 and the mid-1960's) are currently being added to the Land Patent Website.
For information on NILS process and other layers, please read the Land and Minerals About page.
For access to all BLM case data use the LR2000 system.
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For more information on the National Integrated Land System (NILS), please visits our NILS Website.