Quartz-claims were to be two hundred feet on the lead,
including "dips, spurs, and angles." Three days of
work were required each month. Each quartz-claim
was to receive a name, and to be recorded within ten
days. " Hill and surface " claims might be a hundred
feet square. " Ravine and gulch " claims were to be a
hundred feet wide, and extend " from bank to bank."
Claims of every sort were forfeited if not worked. The
recorder, elected for one year, should hold his book
" subject to inspection," and should post copies of the
district-laws in two conspicuous places within the
camp. Reese-river District in 1864 extended twenty
miles north and south. Its laws were numerous and
definite. A written notice signed by fifty claim-owners



254 MINING-CAMPS.

could at any time be called to depose the recorder.
That officer's fees were one dollar ; and he could appoint
deputies, since the district was so large. The written
application of twenty miners would at any time call a
special district-meeting.

The regulations of the famous Alder Gulch in Mon-
tana, the richest for its size that has ever been found,
were adopted in miners' meeting, Sept. 16, 1864, and con-
sisted of two articles in thirty-one sections. They were
draughted by a select committee chosen by the miners
in open "folk-moot;" and were approved in like man-
ner, clause by clause, after free discussion. The officers
of the district were president and secretary. We have
now passed beyond the utmost limits of the alcalde and
the " government by committee " systems. A written
application of five claim-owners was sufficient to call
a special meeting. Much space is devoted to riparian
rights, laws of trespass, and flume ownership. Tailings
must not be permitted to accumulate on another miner's
land. Bar-claims, creek-claims, hill-claims, and other
classifications are mentioned. Three days per week is
the work-requirement. All in all, it is a highly organ-
ized and definite code, and shows the influence of
experienced miners from Idaho, Colorado, and Cali-
fornia. The growth of Montana was marvellous. Be-
fore 1867 twenty-five hundred mineral-lodes were
prospected and recorded in the Territory. In Confed-
erate Gulch, in 1866, three miners are said to have
taken out four hundred and forty-one thousand dollars
from a claim three rods square. Montana miners in
1865-70 founded dozens of new camps, even as far
north as the Saskatchawan.

We must turn to the later manifestations of law in
single mountain camps, organized by Americans. In



LOCAL LAND LAWS AND LEGISLATION. 255

the autumn of 1883, away up in the northern corner of
Idaho, the Cceur d'Alene placers were discovered, south
of Lake Pend d'Oreille, in fastnesses of the North
Rockies that romance and tragedy have made their
own. The mining excitement that followed was enough
to revive the most vivid memories of 1849. From New
Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, California, hardy prospect-
ors by the hundred started for Spokane and Rathrum,
the gateways of the region. They surged in from
Minnesota, from Puget Sound, from Winnipeg and the
Assiniboine, from British Columbia, and the wheat-
plains of Dakota. Mining-papers devoted columns to
the new mineral belt. Some doubted, some warned,
some condemned ; but still the gold-rush continued.

On Pritchard and Eagle Creeks, Shoshone County,
Idaho, the first local laws of the new mines were
adopted. It was early in March, 1884, in Cceur d'Alene
mining-district; and the "by-laws," as the code is
termed, show clearly how the ideas of the earliest camp-
laws have since been modified.

The greatest of changes is in regard to size. All
locations on lodes of quartz, conforming with the
United-States mining-laws of 1872, are to be fifteen
hundred feet in length by six hundred feet in width.
Placer-mine claimants are allowed twenty acres, so lo-
cated that neither length nor breadth shall exceed eighty
rods.

Section three of the thirteen sections of this code
introduces a new factor. It provides that authorized
agents for capitalists may locate and record claims for
them. Such a thing was seldom or never heard of in
old California days; but, as all the world knows, the
professional prospector and locator for others is one of
the most prominent figures in Western camps. " Give



256 MINING-CAMPS.

me a grub-slake, an' I'll locate ye a dozen good mines,"
is the appeal made to each " tenderfoot," as a greenhorn
is affectionately termed.

Section four allows persons to locate one claim on
each gulch where mineral is found, and also to hold
other claims by purchase. This also marks the growth
of the interests of capital, and large moneyed enter-
prises.

Section five regards assessments and claim-work.
The first year after location, one hundred dollars of
work must be done ; and twenty dollars each month be-
tween June and November of subsequent years. Neces-
sary work, such as making roads or trails, building
cabins or other improvements, is allowed to count on
the assessment at the rate of five dollars per day. Be-
tween November and May, the winter-season in that
trying climate, all claims are "laid over;" that is, no
work is needed to retain their ownership.

The section relating to claims being recorded allows
fifteen days from the date of location, evidently because
the district is so large, and the mountain trails so steep
and difficult to travel over, that a shorter time would
inconvenience prospectors who wish to make long tours
before returning to camp.

Riparian rights, as always, receive careful attention.
The oldest locations have first privilege of water ; but
cannot control the surplus, nor waste the water, which
is in every case to be returned to the channel of the
stream for the use and benefit of those below.

The regulation regarding company organization per-
mits miners to unite their claims for purposes of work-
ing them better, and to perform " all their assessments
on one claim." This is extremely similar to the usage
in the early California mines.



LOCAL LAND LAWS AND LEGISLATION. 257

The principle of arbitration is still preserved in almost
its pristine exactitude. All difficulties are to be settled
thus : " Each disputant to be allowed an equal number
of arbitrators ; and, in case of a tie on the decision, said
arbitrators shall have power to call in an assistant."

Claims located prior to the adoption of these laws
are indorsed. Changes in the district-laws require the
written application of at least twelve miners, and ten
days' notice of a meeting posted in three or more con-
spicuous places in the district. Changes between the
1st of November and the 1st of June are illegal and
void. Previous unwritten laws are repealed. The offi-
cers are a claim-recorder, and a chairman, who has power
to call miners' meetings.

Now, these rules made for the government of the
Idaho camp of 1884 have many resemblances to the laws
of the California camps of 1848. The thirty-six years
between have only caused those inevitable changes that
come from the increased capital invested in the busi-
ness, and from the more definite State and National
legislation upon the subject. The generic relationship
of the earlier and the later codes is manifest. Ameri-
can frontiersmen are ruling in Idaho, as once they
ruled in California.

In October, 1884, a New- York gentleman who had
been present at a miners' meeting, Eagle-creek Camp,
in the Cceur d'Alene, only a few months before, told
the writer that the impression he received from it was
that it was the true descendant of the New-England
town-meeting, and illustrated local self-government of
the highest order. Another gentleman recently re-
turned from a journey to the head-waters of the Peace
River, the Frazer, and the Saskatchawan, about the
gigantic precipices of Mount Hooker, says that the



258 MINING-CAMPS.

prospectors there were forming camps, and adopting
their local codes concerning " claims," their primitive
land-law. The process is going on at this hour in the
narrowing realm of the pioneer, to the north and to
the south, along the ridge of the continent; and the
close of this century will not see its completion.



CHAPTER XXII.

THE EARLY RELATIONSHIPS OF MINING AND AGRICUL-
TURAL INTERESTS.

THE student of mining-camps and their local customs
and enactments soon becomes interested in a class of
problems peculiar to those districts of the West that are
situated upon government-lands. He finds that class-
difficulties have arisen between farmer and miner ; and
that not merely camp-law, but the decisions of the State
courts, have taken abundant cognizance of this fact.
These interests, naturally helpers, he finds at times
opposed to each other ; and he can trace the sources of
many recent law-suits to early local legislation. 1

Several of the district-laws quoted in the preceding
chapter recognize the duty of " restoring roads destroyed
in mining operations," and protect a few feet about
a building so that it shall not fall, nor slide into the

1 Among the important decisions of early State courts, which deal
with the relations of miner and agriculturist, are the following : Hicks
vs. Bell, 3 Cal., 227; Irwin vs. Philips, 5 Cal., 145; Stoakes vs. Barrett,
5 Cal., 39; McClintock vs. Bryden, 5 Cal., 97; Tartar vs. Spring Creek
Mining Company, 5 Cal., 398; Conger vs. Weaver, 6 Cal., 556; Burdge vs.
Underwood, G Cal., 45; Nims vs. Johnson, 7 Cal., 110; Martin vs. Brown,
11 Cal., 12; Burdge vs. Smith, 14 Cal., 380; Henshaw vs. Clark, 14 Cal.,
460; Smith vs. Doe, 15 Cal., 100; Gillam vs. Hutchinson, 16 Cal., 153;
Coryell vs. Cain, 16 Cal., 573; Lentz.ws. Victor, 17 Cal., 271; Fremont
vs. Seals, 18 Cal., 433; Rogers vs. Soggs, 22 Cal., 444; Ripley vs. Welch, 'J:i
Cal., 452. For mining-debris cases, Woodruff vs. North BloomtiHd
Mining Company, opinions of Judges Sawyer and Deady, printed in.
San Francisco journals of second week in January, 1884.

259



260 MINING-CAMPS.

gulch. At this point these local rules stop : arbitra-
tors must decide the amount of loss in each individual
case.

As a matter of fact, the mining-interests were in
those days held to be altogether predominant in impor-
tance to the agricultural interests, over the entire gold-
bearing area. Law was made by the miners, for the
miners ; and this meant in practice a disregard of agri-
cultural interests that seems unjust and short-sighted,
until we have analyzed its causes, and comprehended
its reasons. Nominally, we may remark, the district-
rule in early days, and the decision of State courts
afterwards, was, that full damages must be paid: in
practice the obtaining of a fair compensation was often
difficult.

At an early date the State courts of California de-
cided that "agricultural lands, though in possession
of others, may be worked for gold ; " that " the right
belongs to the miner to enter on public mineral lands,
although used for agricultural purposes by others, and
whether enclosed, or taken up and entered under the
Possessory Act." " All persons," it is held, " who settle
for agricultural purposes upon any mining-lands in Cal-
ifornia, so settle at their own risk ; " they do it " sub-
ject to the rights of the miner, who may at any time
proceed to extract any valuable metals which he finds
in such lands." At a later date, some cases of great
hardship and loss having occurred, it was decided that
" the enclosure about the house and outbuildings of a
farmer is protected against entry." The burden of
proof was thrown upon the miner, who was required to
justify his right to enter upon and work a farmer's
land by showing that the land was public land, that it
contained mineral, and that he proposed to occupy



MINING AND AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS. 261

it for the bond-fide purpose of mining ; and he must pay
for the growing crops destroyed by his operations.

The State passed an Act, April 20, 1852, providing
that persons using public lands for pasturage or agri-
culture might bring action for damages against miners
who enter upon said lands, but must not interfere with
their operations. An Act of April 25, 1855, protected
"growing crops, buildings, and other improvements,"
in the mining-districts ; but closes with, " Nothing in
this Act shall prevent miners from working any mineral
lands in the State after the growing crops on the same
are harvested." Decisions under these Acts were nu-
merous. In every case, the right of the agriculturist
to use and enjoy public lands was considered inferior to
the right of the miner when gold was discovered in the
land. The Government would issue no patent to a
pre-emption claimant upon mineral lands who claimed
it for agricultural purposes. Mere entry and possession
gave no right to the exclusive enjoyment of public
mineral lands. " The mines of gold and silver are as
much the property of the State, by virtue of her sove-
reignty, as are similar mines in the hands of private pro-
prietors ; " and the State has, therefore, the " sole right-
to regulate and govern these mines." Growing wood
and timber on public lands " belong to the prior appro-
priator." No person, under pretence of holding land
as a town-lot, can take up and enclose a tract of min-
eral land in a mining-district, as against persons who
afterwards enter on the land in good faith to dig gold,
and who do no injury to the use of the premises as a
residence or for business purposes. Decisions like
these, and many of a similar nature, help us to under-
stand the completeness of the early mining-rights.

The license granted by the State to each and every



262 MINING-CAMPS.

miner, allowing entry upon land for mining-purposes,
as we have amply shown, was restricted to the public
lands. No person could enter upon agricultural lands
held by a United-States patent, and most of the farms
in the mining-counties of California are at present so
held. 1 In cases where the land has never been " with-
drawn as mineral land," but, on the contrary, has been
classed by the Surveyor-General as "agricultural public
lands," the burden of proof rests on the mineral claim-
ant. Within the last year, the Secretary of the Interior
has rendered a number of decisions upon controversies
of this character, in some cases overruling the decision
of the commissioner of the Land Office. He has de-
cided, in regard to placer-mining on small, unnavigable
streams, that it is well settled that such places " may
be appropriated ; and that, as to the water, the locator
obtains only a usufruct in it ;" and granted a patent to
a claim in the bed of Bear River, California. Local
laws are allowed great weight in such decisions in the
Territories.

The foregoing illustrations only serve to emphasize
the predominance of the mining-interests during the
gold-era, when all the lands of the Sierra region were
unsurveyed ; when there was no farm in the mining-
counties, that miners could not condemn and mine out,
paying for only the actual damages done. The fairest
of gardens, the thriftiest of vineyards, the most fruitful
of orchards, one and all were liable to be destroyed
without remedy, by the early placer-miners. The gold-
seekers could, and often did, sluice away roads, or cut
them across by channels impassable for years, undermine
houses, wash away fertile land, move towns to new sites,

1 See the famous case of Boggs vs. Merced Mining Company, 14 Cal.
Rep., 279, ill which Chief Justice Fields gave the decision.



MINING AND AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS. 263

and tear the old location down to bed-rock with tor-
rents of water. There are towns in the mining-region
that have been twice . or thrice thus removed ; there
are others that have been " tunnelled," and " coyoted,"
and " drifted," until " caves " and " breaks " are of not
infrequent occurrence in the midst of streets or town-
lots.

But it has not been destructive always, this endless
onslaught of the miners upon rock and hillside, vale
and cliff. Lands have as often been created as others
have been ruined ; barren beds of rock have often been
filled up to the very brim with rich hillside soil, the
alluvial deposit of ages, and so turned into gardens of
magnificent beauty and exhaustless fertility. Farmers
on mountain streams in the early days have more than
once found that the mud-laden waters from mines above
them brought added fruitfulness to their soil. Many
persons have occupied adjoining tracts for mining and
for agriculture, and have used water first for gold-
washing and then for irrigation. Though the pre-
eminent rights of the miner over all public lands
sometimes worked hardship, yet the full recognition of
these rights was the only logical conclusion of early
California society ; and the only wonder is, that so few
serious difficulties occurred in the gold-period, over this
difficult problem.

The earliest authenticated case of forcible entry upon
fenced-in property used for agricultural purposes, of
which we have an account, occurred in Grass Valley, in
the spring of 1850. There was in all the mountain
land no more lovely arid fertile a spot than this valley,
when the placer-miners began work there, and stripped
its soil to the bed-rock along the wonderfully rich
ravines : there is no lovelier spot to-day, when the re-



264 MINING-CAMPS.

storing hand of time, and the labor of loyal home-
builders, have embowered it in gardens of unsurpassed
beauty ; it is one of the fairest and most prosperous of
the long array of mining-towns, once mining-camps, that
nestle in the Sierra foot-hills, or rest in its pine-clad
canons.

But in 1850, when Grass Valley was the " camp," two
men fenced in a natural meadow. Here they could
annually cut two heavy crops of hay, which was worth
eighty dollars per ton ; they counted upon receiving at
least four hundred dollars per acre that } T ear. How-
ever, before a month had elapsed, a prospector climbed
the brush fence, sunk a shaft through the soil, struck
"pay gravel," and in less than twenty-four hours the
whole hay-ranch was staked out in claims of fifty feet
square ; and, as tradition reports, the ravaged proprie-
tors, through neglect or inability, did not obtain a single
claim. The tract was not property, in the miners' defi-
nition. The possessors had fenced it, subject to the risk
that there might be mineral there. They ought to have
prospected it for themselves first, and whispered the
secret thereof to their intimate friends : so the sturdy,
red-shirted, blue-overalled miners said.

In 1851, it is said that two miners began to sink an
exploration shaft in Main Street, Nevada City, nearly in
front of the office of the South Yuba Canal Company,
and in the business centre of the town. A sturdy
merchant came out, and expostulated with them ; but
was promptly told that nobody had made any law
against digging down to bed-rock, and drifting out the
streets, and they proposed to try it. " Then, I'll make
a law to suit the case," said the irate and energetic
citizen, himself an ex-miner. Walking into his store,
he came out with an army-revolver, and by its persua-



MINING AND AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS. 265

sive presence established the precedent that Main
Street, at least, was not mining-ground. Of course,
this was an extreme case. A jury, or a miners' court,
would probably have decided to exempt Main Street
from exploration, as more valuable for business uses.
But in the lesser towns of the mining-region, perma-
nence did not exist. Nothing was sacred : all rights
were subject to the claims of the miner. Many a case
occurred, where the entire town was moved to an adja-
cent spot, and every inch of the soil on which it stood
was sluiced away from grass-roots to bed-rock. In
many other cases, the miners thought it better to tunnel
underneath, and work out the layers of rich gravel as
best they could ; though this sometimes caused disasters,
and buildings slid from their foundations with the crum-
bling soil during winter rains.

As regards the destroying of roads by miners, an
instance which came under the writer's observation
may serve to illustrate the custom. Nine miles of well-
built mountain road connected a village of two hundred
inhabitants with the county-seat. Though there was
no district organization remaining (in 1878), its influ-
ence was still strong. Along the river-bed, filled twenty
feet deep with the wash and debris of the mines of
1850, were rich spots, neglected by those careless, hasty
pioneers. About a dozen men spent their illy-paid
days in making experiments here and there, trying to
find one of these unspoiled, unrifled bits of a placer.
Two of these prospectors sank a shaft at the edge of
the gravel, five or ten feet from the county-road, and
" struck it rich." They worked a few days, and found
the pay-streak extended into the hill ; they cut a rough
and barely passable wagon-road through the dense
thicket, a hundred feet higher up the slope, and in a



266 MINTNG-CAMPS.

week had torn out fifty feet of the road, leaving a
chasm twenty feet deep. Farmers, merchants, county
officials, passed by, swore at the climb, told them to
hurry with their work, and asked how much they
meant to clean up, but never hinted that the proceed-
ing was illegal or unjustifiable. A few weeks passed,
and the small, irregular piece of virgin ground over-
looked by the early miners was swept clean, yielding
enough, it is said, to pay for a well-stocked farm in
the Sacramento Valley. The two miners tapped a ditch
that passed by on the hillside, far above them, hired the
use of the water, and sluiced earth, rock, and bushes
down into the chasm until it was full to the brim,
ready, when fairly settled down, to form a good foun-
dation for the coilnty-road again.

Countless stories- might be told to exemplify the
supreme position of the miner in early California. But
there was little abuse of that supremacy. Once admit
that the highest use of the soil was to yield gold, and
the rest follows as a matter of course. The great ma-
jority of the early farms and orchards were planted on
soil that was guiltless of containing gold in paying
quantities, and so remained undisturbed. In one case
a miners' court decided, when a small orchard of four-
year-old apple-trees had been mined out, that the land
was worthless; but that the trees, which had been
brought overland from Oregon, were worth fifty dollars
apiece, fruit being then excessively high-priced in
the mines. They had not yet borne fruit, but the
owner received twenty-five hundred dollars for them.
We have heard of several instances where men who
paid high prices for possessory claims to agricultural
lands made extensive improvements; and, the lands be-
ing entered upon for mining-purposes, no equivalent



MINING AND AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS. 267

damages could ever be obtained. In Placerville we
were shown a bit of meadow, which in 1881 had been
mined out five or six times, as it receives the rich
wash from mines above, and the soil from the hillsides.
Pieces of waste and worthless bed-rock, swept clean by
the pioneers, have often been restored, and made into
beautiful and profitable vegetable-gardens, clover-fields,
and fruit-orchards, simply by the process of washing
the rich surface-soil of the hillside down into the
hollows, by using the hydraulic method.

As a rule, in the mines, agriculturists and miners
lived together in harmony in those early clays. The
profits of vegetable-growing, hay-raising, etc., were so
great, that the man who tilled the soil often made more
than did the man who washed out gravel ; and their
unity of interests has been so well recognized, that in
the long struggle between the valley-farmers and the
miners, over the debris-question, which has now passed
into history, the farmers of the mining-region often
helped to support the miners through their thoroughly-
welded-together organizations.

Of that great struggle, which has been to all intents
and purposes a suit between valley-counties and mining-
counties, it is yet too soon to speak ; for a generation
must pass away before its results are manifest. But it
will always rank as one of the most important judicial
decisions ever made in an American State. The calcu-
lations of engineers were, that, since 1876, a hundred
million cubic yards of gravel, sand, and clay had been
washed into the Yuba and its tributaries ; that in 1880
some 15,220 acres had been seriously injured by these
" slickens " deposits ; and that six hundred million
cubic yards yet remained to be removed. The steady
shoaling of navigable rivers and bays was also charged