WHAT IS CLAIM JUMPING AND HOW TO PROTECT YOUR MINING CLAIMS

Claim Jumping Is Not Just History

In the 1800s, claim jumping meant riding onto someone else's mining claim and staking over it by force. Disputes were settled with rifles, dynamite, and occasionally a trip to the territorial court. The General Mining Act of 1872 brought order to the system by establishing formal location, recording, and maintenance requirements for unpatented mining claims on federal land.

The rifles are gone. The vulnerability is not.

Modern claim jumping doesn't happen at the claim post. It happens in BLM MLRS -- the federal database where every unpatented mining claim in the United States is recorded. A claim jumper today is someone with a database query and knowledge of federal mining law, searching for claims that may have been forfeited or abandoned by operation of law -- and then filing new claims over that ground before the original holder realizes what happened.

How Claims Become Vulnerable

An unpatented mining claim on federal land is not permanent. It survives only as long as the holder meets every annual requirement, on time, every year. Miss a deadline and the claim can be declared void by operation of law -- automatically, with no notice and no appeal.

The two primary ways a claim becomes vulnerable:

• Failure to pay the annual maintenance fee -- Currently $200 per claim, due on or before September 1 each year. Under 30 U.S.C. §28i, failure to pay "shall conclusively constitute a forfeiture" of the claim. There is no grace period, no cure provision, and no BLM discretion to accept late payments.
• Failure to file a FLPMA Section 314(a) annual filing -- Under 43 U.S.C. §1744(c), failure to file the required annual instrument with BLM "shall be deemed conclusively to constitute an abandonment" of the claim. The Supreme Court confirmed in United States v. Locke (1985) that this operates automatically with no equitable exceptions.

In both cases, the statute says "conclusively." That means there is no argument about good faith, no appeal based on government error, and no exception for honest mistake. If the filing wasn't made or the fee wasn't paid, the claim is void by operation of law.

The AY2013 Gap Year: A New Attack Vector

In December 2011, Congress rewrote the maintenance fee statute (30 U.S.C. §28f) and accidentally changed the coverage from claims located "before, on, or after August 10, 1993" to just "on or after August 10, 1993." This single drafting error dropped every pre-1993 lode claim, mill site, and tunnel site from the maintenance fee system.

The practical effect: for assessment year 2013, paying the maintenance fee no longer excused pre-1993 lode claimants from the FLPMA annual filing requirement. These claimants were legally required to file a separate annual instrument with BLM by December 30, 2012 -- but almost nobody knew, because BLM continued accepting fee payments as usual.

This is the attack vector modern claim jumpers are exploiting. They query BLM MLRS for pre-1993 lode claims that paid the AY2013 maintenance fee but have no FLPMA filing on record. Then they argue the original claim was conclusively abandoned under §1744(c) and file a new claim over the same ground.

How to Protect Your Claims

1. Pay your maintenance fees on time, every year. The September 1 deadline is absolute. Pay early. Keep receipts. Confirm BLM recorded the payment in MLRS.
2. Verify BLM's records match yours. BLM makes data entry errors. A payment you made may not appear in MLRS, or it may be recorded against the wrong serial number. Don't assume the record is correct -- check it.
3. Know your gap year exposure. If you hold pre-1993 lode claims, mill sites, or tunnel sites, you need to know whether they have a qualifying FLPMA filing on record for the 2012 calendar year. If they don't, you need to understand your legal position before someone else tests it.
4. Monitor your ground. If a claim jumper files over your ground, the first sign may be a new claim appearing in MLRS in the same section. Systematic claim monitoring catches this before it becomes a fait accompli.
5. Run GroundControl on your portfolio. If you've staked a claim block, GroundControl will identify any seniority conflicts, DM placement issues, or excluded-lands overlaps that could make individual claims vulnerable to challenge.

What ClaimWatch Can Do

ClaimWatch has already run the gap year exposure analysis across the entire BLM database. Every pre-1993 lode claim, mill site, and tunnel site that paid the AY2013 maintenance fee has been checked for a qualifying FLPMA filing. If your claims are exposed, we can tell you immediately -- before a claim jumper finds out first.

Beyond gap year exposure, ClaimWatch's Claim Change Tracking reports monitor your areas of interest for new claim activity, competitor staking, and status changes on an ongoing basis. And GroundControl provides a complete geometric and temporal validity analysis of your existing claim portfolio.