1996 US Code
Title 30 - MINERAL LANDS AND MINING
CHAPTER 2 - MINERAL LANDS AND REGULATIONS IN GENERAL
Sec. 23 - Length of claims on veins or lodes

Mining claims upon veins or lodes of quartz or other rock in place bearing gold, silver, cinnabar, lead, tin, copper, or other valuable deposits, located prior to May 10, 1872, shall be governed as to length along the vein or lode by the customs, regulations, and laws in force at the date of their location. A mining claim located after the 10th day of May 1872, whether located by one or more persons, may equal, but shall not exceed, one thousand five hundred feet in length along the vein or lode; but no location of a mining claim shall be made until the discovery of the vein or lode within the limits of the claim located. No claim shall extend more than three hundred feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the surface, nor shall any claim be limited by any mining regulation to less than twenty-five feet on each side of the middle of the vein at the surface, except where adverse rights existing on the 10th day of May 1872 render such limitation necessary. The end lines of each claim shall be parallel to each other.

(R.S. §2320.)

R.S. §2320 derived from act May 10, 1872, ch. 152, §2, 17 Stat. 91.

See Promotion of Mining note set out under section 22 of this title.

Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin mineral lands, see section 48 of this title.

This section is referred to in sections 24, 29, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 46, 47, 48, 49, 102, 541b of this title; title 16 section 460mm–1; title 25 section 640d–10; title 43 sections 1712, 1714, 1732.