areas by prohibiting entry altogether or by limiting or restricting the use which may be made of the surface and the right, title, or interest which may pass through patent. (Legal advice may be required to determine whether or not the mining laws are applicable to a particular tract of national forest land or national grassland or other Title III land.)

The Act of July 23, 1955 (30 U.S.C. 612-615), limited the use of subsequently located mining claims prior to patent, to purposes of prospecting, mining, or processing, and uses reasonably incident thereto; provided for management and disposal of timber and other vegetative surface resources and management of other surface resources (except mineral deposits subject to location) by the United States; and provided for a determination of surface rights on claims existing prior to July 23, 1955.

Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That all valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United States, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and purchase, and the lands in which they are found to occupation and purchase, by citizens of the United States and those who have declared their intention to become such, under regulations prescribed by law, and according to the local customs or rules of miners, in the several mining-districts, so far as the same are applicable and not inconsistent with the laws of the United States. (30 U.S.C. 22)

Sec. 5. That the miners of each mining district may make rules and regulations not in conflict with the laws of the United States, or with the laws of the State or Territory in which the district is situated, governing the location, manner of recording, amount of work necessary to hold possession of a mining-claim, subject to the following requirements: The location must be distinctly marked on the ground so that its boundaries can be readily traced. All records of mining-claims hereafter made shall contain the name or names of the locators, the date of the location, and such a description of the claim or claims located by reference to some natural object or permanent monument as will identify the claim. On each claim located after the passage of this act, and until a patent shall have been issued there for, not less than one hundred dollars' worth of labor shall be performed or improvements made during each year. On all claims located prior to the passage of this act, ten dollars' worth of labor shall be performed or improvements made each year for each one hundred feet in

length along the vein until a patent shall have been issued there for; but where such claims are held in common such expenditure may be made upon any one claim; and upon a failure to comply with these conditions, the claim or mine upon which such failure occurred shall be open to relocation in the same manner as if no location of the same had ever been made: Provided, That the original locators, their heirs, assigns, or legal representatives, have not resumed work upon the claim after such failure and before such location. Upon the failure of any one of several co-owners to contribute his proportion of the expenditures required by this act, the co-owners who have performed the labor or made the improvements may, at the expiration of the year, give such delinquent co-owner personal notice in writing or notice by publication in the newspaper published nearest the claim, for at least once a week for ninety days, and if at the expiration of ninety days after such notice in writing or by publication such delinquent should fail or refuse to contribute his proportion to comply with this act, his interest in the claim shall become the property of his co-owners who have made the required expenditures. Provided, That the period within which the work required to be done annually on all unpatented mineral claims located since May 10, 1872, including such claims in the Territory of Alaska, shall commence at 12 o'clock meridian on the 1st day of September succeeding the date of location of such

claim.

NOTE.--The U.S. Mining Laws Act was further amended by an Act of June 31, 1949, 63 Stat. 214, which provides in part:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the performance of not less than $100 worth of labor or the making of improvements aggregating such amount, which labor or improvements are required under the provisions of section 2324 of the Revised Statutes of the United States to be made during each year, may be deferred by the Secretary of the Interior as to any mining claim or group of claims in the United States upon the submission by the claimant of evidence satisfactory to the Secretary that such mining claim or group of claims is surrounded by lands over which a right-of-way for the performance of such assessment work has been denied or is in litigation or is in the process of acquisition under State law or that other legal impediments exist which affect the right of the claimant to enter upon the surface of such claim or group of claims or to gain access to the boundaries thereof. (30 U.S.C. 28b)

Right of Eminent Domain

• Act of August 1, 1888 (Ch. 782, 25 Stat. 357, as amended; 40 U.S.C. 257)

In every case in which the Secretary of the Treasury or any other officer of the Government has been, or hereafter shall be, authorized to procure real estate for the erection of a public building or for other public uses, he may acquire the same for the United States by condemnation, under judicial process, whenever in his opinion it is necessary or advantageous to the Government to do so, and the Attorney General of the United States, upon every application of the Secretary of the Treasury, or such other officer, shall cause proceedings to be commenced for condemnation within thirty days from receipt of the application at the Department of Justice. (40 U.S.C. 257)

NOTE.--The Condemnation Act itself is not an authority to acquire land. Lands or interests therein may be acquired by condemnation only where such acquisition is otherwise authorized by statute; i.e., Weeks Law, Federal Highway Act, or other applicable statute.

NOTE.--The Wilderness Act, the Eastern Wilderness Act, the National Trails System Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which are included in their entirety in this Handbook, have provisions limiting the use of condemnation.

Organic Administration Act

• Act of June 4, 1897 (Ch. 2, 30 Stat. 11, as amended; 16 U.S.C. 473-475, 477-482, 551)

NOTE.--The following provisions originated as parts of Section 1 of the Sundry Civil Expenses Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 1898.

Creation of National Forests

The President of the United States is hereby authorized and empowered to revoke, modify, or suspend any and all such Executive orders and proclamations, or any part thereof, from time to time as he shall deem best for the public interests . . The President is hereby authorized at any time to modify any Executive order that has been or may hereafter be made establishing any national forest, and by such modification may reduce the area or change the boundary lines of such national forest, or may vacate altogether any order creating such national forest. (16 U.S.C. 473)

NOTE.--The National Forest Management Act of 1976
contained the following:

Notwithstanding the provisions of the Act of June 4, 1897 (30 Stat. 34; 16 U.S.c. 473), no land now or hereafter reserved or withdrawn from the public domain as national forests pursuant to the Act of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. 1103; 16 U.S.C. 471 (now repealed)), or any act supplementary to and amendatory thereof, shall be returned to the public domain except by an act of Congress. (16 U.S.C. 1609)

NOTE.--The original authority for creation of Forest
Reserves (national forests) was provided for in an act
commonly referred to as the Creative Act of 1891
(Ch. 561, 26 Stat. 1103; 16 U.S.C. 471) which stated:

"Sec. 24 That the President of the United States may,
from time to time, set apart and reserve, in any State
or Territory having public land bearing forests, in any
part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with
timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or
not, as public reservations, and the President shall, by

public proclamation, declare the establishment of such reservations and the limits thereof."

Authority to Conduct Surveys

Surveys, field notes, and plats returned from the survey of public lands designated as national forests undertaken under the supervision of the Director of the Geological Survey in accordance with provisions of this Act, shall have the same legal force and effect as surveys, field notes, and plats returned through the Secretary of the Interior; and such surveys, which include subdivision surveys under the rectangular system, shall be approved by the Secretary of the Interior or such officer as he may designate as in other cases, and properly certified copies thereof shall be filed in the respective land offices of the districts in which such lands are situated, as in other cases. All laws inconsistent with the provisions hereof are declared inoperative as respects such survey. A copy of every topographic map and other maps showing the distribution of the forests, together with such field notes as may be taken relating thereto, shall be certified thereto by the Director of the Survey and filed in the Bureau of Land Management. (16 U.S.C. 474)

Designation and Purposes of National Forests

All public lands designated and reserved prior to June 4, 1897, by the President of the United States under the provisions of the Act of March 3, 1891, the orders for which shall be and remain in full force and effect, unsuspended and unrevoked, and all public lands that may hereafter be set aside and reserved as national forests under said Act, shall be as far as practicable controlled and administered in accordance with the following provisions. No national forest shall be established, except to improve and protect the forest within the boundaries, or for the purpose of securing favorable conditions of water flows, and to furnish a continuous supply of timber for the use and necessities of citizens of the United States; but it is not the purpose or intent of these provisions, or of the Act providing for such reservations, to authorize the inclusion therein of lands more valuable for the mineral therein, or for agricultural purposes, than for forest purposes. (16 U.S.C. 475).

Free Use Timber

The Secretary of Agriculture may permit, under regulations to be prescribed by him, the use of timber and stone found upon national forests, free of charge, by bona fide settlers, miners, residents, and prospectors for