The General Mining Act of is a United States federal law that authorizes and governs prospecting and mining for economic minerals , such as gold, platinum, and silver, on federal public lands. This law, approved on May 10, , codified the informal system of acquiring and protecting mining claims on public land , formed by prospectors in California and Nevada from the late s through the s, such as during the California Gold Rush.
All citizens of the United States of America 18 years or older have the right under the mining law to locate a lode hard rock or placer gravel mining claim on federal lands open to mineral entry. These claims may be located once a discovery of a locatable mineral is made.
Locatable minerals include but are not limited to platinum, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, uranium and tungsten. Miners and prospectors in the California Gold Rush of found themselves in a legal vacuum. Although the US federal government had laws governing the leasing of mineral land, the United States had only recently acquired California by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , and had little presence in the newly acquired territories.
Miners organized their own governments in each new mining camp for example the Great Republic of Rough and Ready , and adopted the Mexican mining laws then existing in California that gave the discoverer right to explore and mine gold and silver on public land.
California miners spread the concept all over the west with each new mining rush, and the practices spread to all the states and territories west of the Great Plains. Although the practices for open mining on public land were more-or-less universal in the West, and supported by state and territorial legislation, they were still illegal under existing federal law.
