MINING LAWS OF EARLY DAYS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XXII, 28 November 1896, Page 123

MINING LAWS OF EARLY DAYS.

The earliest mining laws in the United States were enacted, not by Congress, but by the miners themselves in the mining districts. It is a curious fact that from 1849 to 1866, the period of the greatest development in the mining of gold, there was no law of the United States regulating the subject. The prospectors roamed over the public lands, located placer or quartz mines, and took out a fabulous store of gold without any title whatever to the lands from which they dug this great store of wealth. They were in a strict sense trespassers. A policy to reserve mineral lands from sale under the general land laws bad prevailed for many years, and had been expressed in suitable laws, bntno provision had been made for the sale of such lands.

In the land grants to the Pacific Railroad companies it was provided that mineral lands should not pass under the grants. The river beds, gulches and mountain sides were prospected by men who carried picks and basins in their hands and a brace of pistols in tbeir belts. They were aflame with the lust of gold, and among them were many desperate men, but they had the Anglo-Saxon instinct for organizing civil institutions and bis love of fair play. There were no mining laws,

and in many places none of any sort. They met the emergency by a public meeting, which resolved itself into a legislative body with full powers, and made a code that did not cover a wide field but covered their case. The limits of a claim and the distribution of the water supply were prescribed and established, and every man became a warrantor of every other man’s title. These camp legislators had this advantage of Congress, and of all other legislative bedies that I know of—they had a good practical knowledge of the subjects they dealt with.