What happens to Closed Claims?

[clay]

Land Matters Claims Advantage Members have been receiving their twice monthly Closed Claims Reports for about a month now. These reports can be very helpful for someone doing claims research and might be used for several things. Maybe even finding recently opened land for prospecting or mining claims?

In addition to the twice monthly update reports Claims Advantage Members are emailed a series of Special Reports as they are created. There have been two Special Reports since the Land Matters Membership program was started last month. These reports are about 15 pages long and have State by State interactive tables to help claims researchers.

I can't share the reports themselves but with each report Land Matters includes heat maps to give a visual aid in identifying the most active areas. Special Report #1 presented Placer Mining Claims that were closed within the last three years AND were more than 30 years old when they were closed. This was an interesting report because claims that are more than 30 years old are usually considered valuable and worth keeping. Not your average exploratory claim that lasts for a year or two. Useful information for the clever prospector.

Here's the heat map from Special Report #1. The map shows the areas with the most closed Placer claims as a deep red and then fewer claims density are shaded down from lighter red to pale yellow. The smaller black lines are county borders to give you a little better idea where the activity is taking place.



Although this map is nowhere near as detailed as the full report it does give a good view of where the claims changed and even potentially tracks areas of higher mineralization and claims interest. The report itself shows for each claim 14 data fields and a direct link to the BLM records for the claim.

The Special Report #2 is similar to the first but deals with 30 year lode claims. Neither of these Special Reports or the twice monthly Closed Claims Reports could be created from LR2000 information.

We are working on Special Report #3 now and I'm really excited about what that's going to reveal. The things Land Matters can do with our huge databases is truly amazing. I'll have more info on that report when we get closer to releasing it.

Barry

[Tortuga]

That big red dot in Arizona between Pima and Pinal counties is odd.

Might be the Santa Catalina Mountains?

[clay]

Those claims were in Pinal County Tortuga. They were located in 1965 and closed in 2013 due to lack of payment.

It looks like they were located north of the Silver Bell group, probably on the State land there.

Most prospectors don't realize that a good portion of the State lands mineral rights are still with the U.S. and can be prospected and located. I don't know whether those claims were located for Gold or Copper but it's a pretty good bet there might be some gold there.

Maybe check out the geology, mineralization and history and take a look see there. You might just find some good hunting grounds close to home? Maybe someone here has hunted that area and would care to comment?

[Tortuga]

I know there's supposed to be fine gold around Ragged Top hill in the Silverbell's. There's definitely copper in those mountains considering the size of the huge mine that's operating back there.

Haven't had much luck tracking down anymore placer gold info on the area tho. I know of a nice sized meteorite that was found out there too.

[clay]

We've been saving up data for Land Matters for a while now. We have a lot of sources for the data we are compiling but the biggest part, most months, is the twice monthly BLM database copies we archive from the BLM server in Denver.

We download more than 3 Gb of database files each month in updates and that allows us to do time based comparisons of the information. That's a whole other dimension of analysis than looking around the LR2000 database.

Besides our twice monthly Mining Claims Maps updates and twice monthly Claims Advantage Closed Claims Reports we have started to publish Special Reports that leverage our database to answer questions that can't be answered by just looking through the public information. That's where we are getting the information to make the charts I've been posting here and the very popular Mining Claims Maps on the Land Matters website.

The latest Special Report answers the question:

How many Placer Claim locations were held for more than 20 years and are now unclaimed?

The basic answer is pretty amazing:



Yeah... that many, that old and that long. That many old historical Placer Claims are not now claimed. Makes you wonder if we are missing something or if in the old days they mined mud for fun. :icon_scratch:

To get the final result we broke these claims down by Quarter Section and took out the obvious withdrawn and now private areas. We checked against current active claims locations. Then we made a 15 page report, broken down by State and County, of each and every one of those claims. These report tables are sortable and each claim has a link to the Serial Register page for their closed case file.

Since we had to use GIS software to make the report we ended up with a map that gives a basic outline of these areas. Even though we are still putting the finishing touches to the report I thought I would put up that map and let you take a quick look around at what 18,835 open claims look like.

Here's the link to the map:

Special Report #3 Map

Look around. There might be something in your backyard!


Barry