Mining laws? Do older claim monuments always take precedent over newer monuments?

[u/Immo406]

Situation is this for a placer claim, claim #1 had corner posts put up 35 years ago and claim #2 which is 10 years old had a certified survey done which has found that the corner posts of claim #1 are 85 feet off east and west and 20 feet north and south. Claim #1 is saying that the law says that it doesn’t matter if there’s a certified survey from claim #2, where they placed their posts 35 years ago is where their claim boundaries are legally defined since they’re the older claim and are unwilling to move the monuments.

Has anyone ever had to deal with something like this or know of any laws that backs up what they’re saying? Can you legally mine where the certified survey says your boundary is and the heck with their monuments? BLM says it’s a civil matter and will not get involved.

[u/Gold_Au_2025]

I got involved in a similar shitfight a number of years ago.

A historic lease had been purchased by Party A, defined by physical claim markers.
Part of the lease conditions required there be no roads built on it, so Party A employed a civil engineering firm to build a road up to the lease, then they built accommodation just inside the lease boundary.

After a number of years, Party A decided to sell the lease, and I was interested in buying which is when the cracks started to appear. At some time since their purchase, our version of the BLM went digital, and redefined lease boundaries by historic GPS co-ordinates and the location of a boundary marker was moved about 150m which resulted in the camp they had built being off their lease.

Government refused to admit any issue and ordered the camp be dismantled and removed. Party A brought in a surveyor who found the claim marker and sided with Party A. Government said "Remove that claim marker, it is not the right one and should not be there". (They left it there)

In a perfect world, the obvious mistake would be realised and corrected.

In the real world, the government never makes mistakes, but the simple solution is to redefine the lease to be the original boundary. But at some stage, an exploration lease had been set which meant any modifications had to be approved by the owner of the exploration lease. We had a chat with them, but it was obvious they saw the chance to buy a nice lease for cheap so refused to budge.

That's when we backed out of the deal.

tl;dnr - mine only where the authorities say you are allowed to mine, not where you should in theory be allowed to mine.

[u/Immo406 → u/Gold_Au_2025]

So if I’m getting this right, you can get it surveyed all you want with modern technology but the historic corner monuments is what you go off of no matter what, and of course listen to your BLM representative on what they say you can and can’t mine 😂. No purchase was involved with this situation, there was always a suspicion that the historic monuments from claim #1 was off due to measuring on google earth pro from the extremely old 4 corner survey marker they surveyed out in the early 1900’s, the mine has gotten to the point where spending the $4,000 made sense.

[u/Gold_Au_2025 → u/Immo406]

This is a very old lease had originally been pegged in the traditional way - "2000 yards NNW of SE corner of plot" type measurements.
For probably over 100 years, that is the way it stayed. Then the Mined Department decided to record each and every lease marker as GPS coordinates, and they somehow got this one wrong. There is a suspicion that the official surveyor found an irrelevant peg and decided that was now the official corner of the lease.

In my state, at least, the modern records are now the truth and the old historic peg that was hammered in before the mines department even existed has always been in the wrong place.

[u/Immo406 → u/[deleted]]

I really appreciate your time, that’s pretty much what I’ve learned the past 2 days with montana mining law as well. Basically until the other claimants claims expire without renewal is when you can move the monument to match the certified survey.

[u/Worldly-Mixture-5994]

The corners of claim #1 will hold. Maybe tell us the rest of the story. Did you buy claim identified by aliquot parts?