UNITED STATES SMELTING R. & M. CO. v. Lowe, Civ. No. 5493.
| Decision Date | 22 August 1946 |
| Docket Number | Civ. No. 5493. |
| Parties | UNITED STATES SMELTING REFINING & MINING CO. v. LOWE. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Alaska |
Southall R. Pfund and Charles J. Clasby, both of Fairbanks, Alaska, for plaintiff.
Emma Grace Lowe, of Fairbanks, Alaska, in pro. per.
This is an action to quiet title to the Snow Shoe Fraction on Fish Creek, Fairbanks Recording District, Division aforesaid. Plaintiff claims under a predecessor in interest who located the Fraction upon the 15th day of March, 1908. The defendant claims under a location of the ground in 1941. She attacks plaintiff's complaint as not stating a cause of action on the ground that the location certificate filed in 1908 by the locator of the Snow Shoe Fraction was void, because it did not describe the claim by a reference to some natural object or permanent monument as would identify the claim.
The defendant assumes that there was a law in force at the time of the location of the said Snow Shoe Fraction which required a location certificate to be recorded by the locator and which forfeited his right to the ground located, unless such location certificate was recorded.
In 1908 section 2324, Revised Statutes of the United States, 30 U.S.C.A. § 28, a general mining law, was in force in Alaska with reference to the location of placer mining claims such as the Snow Shoe Fraction.
Long ago it was established that the general laws of the United States did not in themselves require that a location certificate should be recorded. 40 C.J. 802; Sturtevant v. Vogel, 9 Cir., 167 F. 448; Sutherland v. Purdy, 9 Cir., 1916, from Alaska, 234 F. 600, 601.
The act of congress of June 6, 1900, 31 Stat. 327, 48 U.S.C.A. § 382, provided that certain instruments should be recorded by the recorders in Alaska and included the following: "Notices of location of mining claims shall be filed for record within ninety days from the date of the discovery of the claim described in the notice * * *." Section 2925, Compiled Laws of Alaska 1933, erroneously dropped out the above quoted portion of said act of June 6, 1900.
In the case of Sturtevant v. Vogel, supra, 9 Cir., 1909, from Alaska, defendants located their claim in 1903, but recorded a location certificate therefor which did not describe the claim with reference to natural objects or permanent monuments so as to identify it. In 1904, the plaintiff relocated the same ground and filed a sufficient location certificate. The...
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United States Smelting Refining & Mining Co. v. Lowe
...certificate did not make the ground open for location. Sturtevant v. Vogel, 9 Cir., 1909, 167 F. 448; U. S. Smelting Refining & Mining Co. v. Lowe, D.C., 66 F.Supp. 897. Although Territorial laws as to filing location certificates were passed by the legislature in 1913 and thereafter, they ......