Western Mineral Resources

U.S. Geological Survey
Data Series 228
Version 1.1

Mining Claim Activity on Federal Land in the Contiguous United States, 1976 through 2004

By J. Douglas Causey and David G. Frank

2006

thumbnail view of map
Public Land Survey sections (shown in green) that contained an active claim in 2004 (from figure 1)

Abstract

Statistical compilations of mining claim activity on Federal Land derived from the Bureau of Land Management's LR2000 database have been published by the U.S Geological Survey. This report updates Causey (2005) by adding statistics for an additional year of mining claim records, incorporating any corrections in older data done by BLM, adding a Public Land Survey spatial database for South Dakota, and improving correlation of the statistics to spatial databases in Washington and Nevada.

The statistics compiled from the LR2000 database are counts of number of active mining claims in a section each year from 1976 to 2004 for all states within the contiguous United States. Claims are broken down by lode and placer types and a dataset is provided summarizing all claims including millsite and tunnel-site claims. One table presents data by case type, case status, and number of claims in a section. This report includes a spatial database for each state in which mining claims were recorded. A field is present in both datasets that allows the statistical data to be joined to the spatial databases so that spatial displays and analysis can be done using appropriate software.

The data show how mining claim activity has changed in intensity, space, and time. Variations can be examined on a state, as well as a national level. The data are tied to a section of land, approximately 640 acres, which allows it to be used at regional, as well as local scale. It is restricted in that it only encompasses Federal land.

File Name
File Type and Description
File Size
TEXT
ds-228.pdf
 The main text of this paper as a 26-page PDF file
624 KB
metadata.txt
 Metadata as an ASCII text file
16 KB
DATA PACKAGE
ds-228_data.zip
 Package of data from all 15 states in a Zip file
28.9 MB compressed (opens to 400 MB)
DATA FOLDERS
(Each of these folders contains both uncompressed data and the same data compressed in a Zip file.)
Arizona
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48.4 MB
Arkansas
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1.5 MB
California
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57.1 MB
Colorado
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35.6 MB
Florida
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0.41 MB
Idaho
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30.2 MB
Montana
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23.2 MB
Nebraska
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0.29 MB
Nevada
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86.8 MB
New Mexico
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23.5 MB
Oregon
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23.6 MB
South Dakota
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4.8 MB
Utah
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48.5 MB
Washington
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11.5 MB
Wyoming
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32.5 MB

For questions about the content of this report, contact Doug Causey

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