USA > California > Land in California, the story of mission land, ranches, squatters, mining claims, railroad grants, land scrip, homesteads > Part 9
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" George William Beattie and Helen Pruitt Beattie, Heritage of the Valley (Pasadena, 1939).
5 W. W. Robinson, The Island of Santa Catalina (Los Angeles, 1941).
6 See Los Angeles Times, October and November, 1897.
7 180 U.S. 72.
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The pattern of promotion laid down by the Land Set- tlers League, was followed in the 1920's by a Home- steaders Association which induced "homesteaders"-so called-to file applications in the United States Land Office at Los Angeles for land, not only in the San Fer- nando Valley but in Rancho Lomas de Santiago (the Irvine Ranch), Orange County, and in Rancho Los Palos Verdes, in Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit, Los Angeles County, and other places. The Association charged a filing fee plus a legal retainer fee varying from one hun- dred to one thousand dollars. Prospective applicants, who yearned for land that others had improved, were taken out and shown bearing orchards, vineyards, productive farms, and modern dwellings, even towns with buildings of brick. They were informed that through appropriate ac- tion of Congress or the courts the titles of the present oc- cupants would be held invalid, that the land would then be subject to homestead entry, and that their applications would take priority.
So active were the promoters with their charge that California rancho titles were invalid or clouded and so numerous were the city-bred "homesteaders," that the Committee on Public Lands and Surveys was directed by the United States Senate to investigate charges and reports that vast tracts of land within the area ceded to the United States by Mexico were fraudulently held by private inter- ests. The Committee conducted hearings in Los Angeles, beginning in April, 1929, and in Washington, D.C. The hearings in Los Angeles were before subcommitteemen Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, Senator Sam G. Brattan of New Mexico, and Senator Porter H. Dale of Vermont. They revealed that since 1922 about 800 "home- steaders" had expended $300,000 and had kept a number
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of attorneys with sizable staffs busy during that time. Parts of about 175,000 acres of land which had long been the undisputed property of their owners were being "home- steaded." The filings usually were for 160 acres, but some- times for 80 or 40 acres. It was the rejection of these filings by the local land office and the appeal to the United States Land Commissioner in Washington, D.C., then to the De- partment of the Interior, and finally to the Attorney Gen- eral, that had brought about the Senate investigation.
In the eight-page report issued by the Committee, March 15, 1932, the work of the Board of Land Commis- sioners is summarized.8 The Supreme Court has been called on many times, the report points out, to review the Act of March 3, 1851, under which the board acted. In these cited cases it has been held over and over again that an adjudication of the board, when not appealed from, or the decree of the court, in the event of an appeal, is con- clusive. All further inquiry is ended. This would be true even if it could be shown that a particular grant had been obtained through fraud. The case of United States v. Throckmorton (98 U.S. 61) is cited in point. In addition, the report explains that the validity of a patent cannot be questioned even if it should have included land in excess of that originally granted, for the patent was issued in conformity with the act's requirements-which included a survey of the granted land. Furthermore, if any rancho land were to be restored to the public domain, it would be the policy of the Department of the Interior to give a preference right to acquire this land to the person in pos- session who is asserting claim or color of title. Finally, the Committee finds the grants in question to be valid, with no evidence of fraud, the patents to be binding, and the
8 Senate Report No. 426, 72d Cong., 1st sess., 1932.
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attacks upon the titles made "by persons seeking to profit financially at the expense of well intentioned but grossly misled applicants for homestead entry."
Since every American seems to be a squatter at heart, court decrees and Senate reports do not entirely kill the urge to get something for nothing-nor the fundamental need for a place to live. Consider the case of the hapless 300,000 migrants from the "Dust Bowl" who in the early 'thirties poured into California in broken-down cars. Stranded in the San Joaquin Valley, they put their cook- stoves, iron washtubs, bedsprings, and mattresses upon "vacant" land and established squatter camps that were notoriously filthy. For several years these indigents and jobless squatters were a major state and national issue. The housing shortage at the end of World War II brought about a renewal of squatter activity, though to a minor extent. Consider, too, the group of men who a few years ago pitched tents along the Santa Monica shore in the hope that a benevolent government would tell them that the coastal strip lay outside original rancho boundaries and was therefore open to settlement. Consider the hold- ers of various kinds of valid "scrip"-government-issued rights to "locate," such as the high-priced Valentine scrip-who wander about year in and year out, like the never-give-up desert prospectors, looking for a piece of "unclaimed public land" valuable enough to claim. Con- sider the "swivel-chair squatters," or "claim jumpers," living in cities close to the Pacific, who filed nearly two hundred applications for federal oil leases covering seg- ments of oil-rich, submerged, offshore land, frequently in conflict with one another, hoping, if it should be held to be part of the public domain, that they would supplant present claimants.
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Yes, every American seems instinctively a squatter, but modern squatterism has come a long way from the time when men of adventure were moving into California in the late 1840's and early 1850's, pioneers who were carving a destiny for themselves and California.
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CHAPTER X
Titles in El Dorado
NINETY-FOUR-YEAR-OLD Luís Peralta, owner of Rancho San Antonio-site of Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda- one day called his sons together. James W. Marshall had discovered a few flakes of gold at Coloma on the South Fork of the American River and practically every man in California was rushing to the streams and canyons of the Sierra Nevada. Peralta wanted to caution the men of his own family.
"My sons," said the old ranchero, "God has given this gold to the Americans. Had he desired us to have it, he would have given it to us ere now. Therefore go not after it, but let others go. Plant your lands, and reap; these be your best gold-fields, for all must eat while they live."1
Few Californians, whether native-born or immigrant, were of the mind of this wise patriarch who had come to Alta California as a Spanish soldier in the century pre- ceding. Accordingly, pueblos and ranchos were quickly
1 Bancroft, History of California, VI, 65-66.
[133]
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depopulated. From San Francisco, where sailors aban- doned their ships, to San Diego, the southernmost town, the story was the same. In the southern part of the state, as in the central, rancheros had become miners, and, in their absence, Indians were driving horses off to the mountains. From the vicinity of Monterey, the capital, a thousand men are said to have left for the mining areas within one week. The government in Monterey was stricken, soldiers deserted, and Military Governor Mason was reduced to peeling his own onions and cooking his own dinners.
By the close of 1848, four-fifths of California's able- bodied men, whether Californians or imported, had be- come gold miners. Mining was in progress throughout a two-hundred-mile stretch along the axis of the Sierra Nevada, extending north from the scene of discovery at Coloma, which was in the John Sutter domain. Pierson B. Reading, owner of the most northerly of the ranchos, was at work with a force of his Indians on Clear Creek in Shasta County. John Bidwell, another ranchero, was min- ing along the North Fork of the Feather River at the rich placer which became known as Bidwell Bar. Mormon settlers were among the earliest and most active of the miners. As the influx of newcomers to the gold area con- tinued, the streams and rivers for thirty miles on either side of Coloma were taken over by wielders of pick, knife, and pan. Then rivers farther away were sought out. By June of 1848 the miners had numbered 2,000, half of whom were panning for gold on the branches of the Amer- ican River. Indians were hired to mine, but presently, tiring of being exploited, many of them went into busi- ness for themselves. By October perhaps 9,000 men were actually hunting the yellow metal in the gulches and
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along the creeks of the Sierra Nevada. Experienced Mexi- can miners from Sonora, Mexico, had come north and founded the California mining camp of Sonora. They gave the "Mother Lode" its name.
By the end of 1848 all of America was gold crazy, and thousands of America's most energetic young men were on the way to the California gold fields. They were sing- ing:
Oh! California, that's the land for me! I'm bound for the Sacramento, With the washbowl on my knee!
Meanwhile San Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton were taking form as cities that existed solely to supply the miners of California. Los Angeles, heart of the cattle country, was sending herds of cattle north to supply the expanding demand for beef. By the spring of 1853 the state's population was 300,000, more than $260,000,000 had been dug from the gold fields, and many a mining camp had become a substantial town. The constant rush to new fields had opened distant regions to settlement.
The gold fever did not burn out in the 1850's, though certain phases began to subside. Placer digging was fol- lowed by quartz crushing, and hydraulic mining started in 1855. There were recurrent miners' stampedes; for example, the stampede to Santa Catalina Island as late as 1863-1864, after the Gold Rush of the north had ebbed southward via the Kern River rush of the middle 1850's and the Los Angeles County placer excitement of 1858- 1862-in the San Gabriel, Santa Anita, and San Francis- quito canyons. California is today a great gold-mining state, on a large and small scale, and individual prospec- tors still go forth for recreation if not for profit, Eldorado County itself-scene of the gold discovery at Coloma and
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center of early Gold-Rush activity-has today mines of gold, copper, slate, limestone, and other materials that produce $3,500,000 annually.
When miners were few in number-as in the early days after the discovery in 1848-they could move about over a large field and, without dispute, help themselves to the cream of what they found and move on to new fields. But as soon as miners began to assemble in any number along the streams and in the canyons the need for law and order became apparent. Late comers and less fortunate miners demanded equal rights with others. Mining activities were largely on public land, for the ranchos rarely ex- tended into mountain regions. There was no legal ma- chinery in existence, territorial or federal, that covered mining on public lands or that could protect a miner in his discovery. Mexican mining procedure did not apply, and as early as February 12, 1848, Governor Mason had issued an order from Monterey purporting to abolish "Mexican laws and customs now prevailing in California, relative to the 'denouncement' of mines.""
Miners' camp meetings called to adopt rules governing mining and mining titles were the answer to an anar- chistic situation. They grew out of necessity and experi- ence, though they have antecedents in European and Spanish-American mining practice. Camp-meeting rules became logically the laws of the district and in time the mining laws of the nation, as well as the basis for mining jurisprudence in many other countries.
The size of claims, how to mark them, the registering of claims, the appointment of a recorder, what consti- tuted abandonment, the boundaries of the camp-and later of the district-the settlement of disputes-these
2 House Ex. Doc. No. 17, pp. 476-477.
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matters were what miners talked about in their camp meetings. The will of the majority was accepted. Rules were put in writing. The miners abided by them. Later disputes were settled by the recorder, the alcalde, an ap- pointed committee, or the camp meeting itself.
In some camps or districts the claims were limited to ten feet square. In others fifty feet was allowed, in poorer districts one hundred or more feet. Size was governed by richness of the locality, its extent, the number of miners, and the difficulty of working the ground. The discoverer usually was allowed first choice or two claims. Claims were registered with the recorder, at a fee of fifty cents or one dollar. Stakes, ditches, and notices marked the claims. To hold a claim a miner had to do a certain amount of work upon it. In time the transfer of claims became a practice-like the conveying of real estate. At first, verbal transfers, if accompanied by actual transfer of possession, were sufficient and so recognized by the California courts. Later, after 1860, they had to be in writing.
The source of title-universally recognized by miners' camps-was discovery and appropriation. Continued pos- session of a claim was dependent upon its development by work being done upon it. These fundamentals are a part of present-day mining law. To them federal legisla- tion added the right of a miner to obtain, not merely a possessory title, but full and permanent ownership of the land itself, to be evidenced by a patent issued by the United States.
The early title situation in the gold fields of California, when camp law was mining law, has been the subject of philosophic comment by many writers. Henry George saw the miners being thrown back upon first principles.
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. It was by common consent declared that this gold-bearing land should remain common property ... The title to the land remained in the government, and no individual could acquire more than a possessory claim. The miners in each district fixed the amount of ground an individual could take and the amount of work that must be done to constitute use. If this work were not done, any one could re-locate the ground. Thus, no one was allowed to forestall or to lock up natural resources ... One man might strike an enormously rich deposit and others might vainly prospect for months and years, but all had an equal chance. No one was allowed to play the dog in the manger with the bounty of the Creator . .. With the decadence of placer mining in California, the accus- tomed idea of private property finally prevailed in the pas- sage of a law permitting the patenting of mineral lands.3
There were probably more than five hundred placer camps in California during the flush period .*
A typical set of mining regulations were those adopted by the miners of the Rock Ditch and Mining District at a meeting held December 1, 1853. They provided:
I. This district shall be bounded by the Fordyce and Booth Rock Creek Districts on two sides, the Spout Spring Ravine on the lower sides, and the south branch of Rock Creek on the other.
II. All claims shall be one hundred feet front, running into the mountain to such depth as the parties locating may desire.
III. That it is necessary to thoroughly prospect the said ground, and that the prospecting of one claim will test the whole. All persons holding claims are requested to assist in running in a cut-to be commenced so soon as it rains, and all persons who may assist in the cut shall be entitled to one claim extra as discoverers.
IV. All claims not represented in the cut shall have two full days' work in six done on them, or otherwise are subject to forfeiture.
3 Henry George, Progress and Poverty, chap. v.
+ Charles Howard Shinn, Mining Camps, A Study in American Frontier Government (New York, Charles Scribner Sons, 1885).
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V. Where claims are not workable for want of water, a notice shall be placed on them and renewed every thirty days.
VI. John Wharton, Sr., was duly elected recorder of said district, and all claims shall be duly recorded within three days from day of location or transfer.5
The notices that miners posted on their claims were often intentionally or unintentionally humorous.
Notis: To all and everybody. This is my claim, fifty feet on the gulch, cordin' to Clear Creek District Law, backed up by shot-gun amendments. (Signed) Thomas Hall.
Clame Notise. Jim Brown of Missoury takes this ground, jumpers will be shot.6
Race restrictions were included in the laws of some mining districts. The regulations of the Columbia Dis- trict, for example, provided that "neither Asiatics nor South-Sea Islanders shall be allowed to mine in this dis- trict, either for themselves or for others." The gold rush had brought the races of the world to California. Ameri- can miners, though themselves newcomers and conquer- ors, had no wish to share the wealth of the foothills with "foreigners"-particularly with Spanish Americans and Asiatics. There were thousands of Mexicans, Chilenos, and Chinese to offer competition to citizens of the United States. Sandwich Islanders (Hawaiians) were numerous and objectionable to the American 'forty-niner. The native Indians were detested. Foreign miners, when not excluded by race restrictions, were taxed. No one both- ered to legislate against Indians, and when they got in the way of American miners they were, in hundreds of instances, hunted down and shot.
The California Legislature acknowledged as early as
5 Bancroft, California Inter Pocula, pp. 240-241.
6 Shinn, op. cit.
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1851 that the miners themselves had perfected a prac- tical working system. Jurisdiction in actions involving mining claims was conferred upon the local justices of the peace. The proceedings of miners' meetings were recognized by the courts so far as they were not incon- sistent with the laws and constitution of the state.
By 1861 Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, Idaho, and Ari- zona were following the usages and laws of California miners.
Said Chief Justice Chase in 1865, in one of his deci- sions: "A special kind of law, a sort of common law of the miners, the off-spring of a nation's irrepressible march- lawless in some senses, yet clothed with dignity by a con- ception of the immense social results mingled with the fortunes of these bold investigators-has sprung up on the Pacific Coast."""
In the following year, on May 28, 1866, the Conness Committee, reporting to the Senate of the United States, said, somewhat floridly:
The miners' rules and regulations are not only well under- stood, but have been construed and adjudicated for now nearly a quarter of a century ... By this great system estab- lished by the people in their primary capacities, and evi- dencing by the highest possible testimony the peculiar genius of the American people for founding empire and order, pop- ular sovereignty is displayed in one of its grandest aspects, and simply invites us, not to destroy, but to put upon it the stamp of national power and unquestioned authority ... The rules and regulations of the miners ... form the basis of the present admirable system arising out of necessity; they be- came the means adopted by the people themselves for estab- lishing just protection to all ... The local courts, beginning with California, recognize these rules, the central idea of which was priority of possession.8
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
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For eighteen years-from 1848 to 1866-the regulations and customs of California miners as enforced and molded by the courts and sanctioned by the legislation of the state constituted the law governing mines on public lands. All recognized discovery, followed by appropria- tion, as the foundation of the possessor's title. Retention of title was conditional upon his development of the claim by work done upon it.
Then came the Congressional Act of July 26, 1866, which recognized local mining customs and rules of miners when not in conflict with the laws of the United States and acknowledged and confirmed the miners' rights to their properties. It was not unopposed, for many mem- bers of Congress felt that miners should buy or lease their mineral land to help pay for Civil War debts. The Act of 1866 not only confirmed local usages and prescribed rules to protect the rights of miners, but it also established, and this was its primary object, a method by which patents from the United States granting mineral lands might be obtained. It provided that a claimant who had previously occupied and improved a vein or lode of quartz or rock- bearing gold, silver, or other valuable deposits, and had spent a specified minimum sum in actual labor and im- provements, could file a diagram of his mine in the local land office and receive a patent giving him absolute own- ership and the right to follow the vein or lode to any depth.
Subsequent acts of Congress, principally the Congres- sional Mining Act of May 10, 1872, define the entire sub- ject of mining law, and court decisions followed the lines laid down by these acts. The Act of 1872, amending that of 1866 and actually codifying the common law of the miners, has retained its essential features to the present
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time. Under it "all valuable mineral deposits in lands belonging to the United States, both surveyed and un- surveyed, are ... free and open to exploration and pur- chase, 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.""
Mining location and operation were carried on in Cali- fornia under these federal statutes of 1872 until 1909. On July 1, 1909, the state itself adopted legislation em- bracing the requirements of the Congressional Act of 1872, together with such additional matters as the posting and recording of notices of mining locations.1º It is true that the state had years earlier given official recognition to miners' customs in its Code of Civil Procedure enacted March 3, 1872. Section 748 of this code referred to actions involving mining claims and was a reënactment of an old provision that existed long before the state's laws were codified.
To get a full picture of mining and mining titles we must take into consideration the Congressional Acts, the rules and regulations of the General Land Office, the California statutes of 1909, and federal and state court decisions bearing upon them. The professional examiner of mining titles, asked to render an opinion on the va- lidity of the title to a particular unpatented mining claim,
The general provisions of United States mining laws are set forth in United States Revised Statutes, sections 2319-2346. See Public Land Stat- utes of the United States, compiled by Daniel M. Greene (United States Department of the Interior, 1931).
10 The Civil Code of the State of California, sec. 1426 et seq.
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will need to be familiar with these acts, rules, statutes, and decisions. He will need also proper abstracts of title from the county recorder's and local land offices, the as- sistance of a surveyor, the testimony of witnesses concern- ing the consummation of certain acts-such as posting the location notice-and the existence of certain conditions that public records alone do not disclose. But first of all he will have determined from the records of the federal land office whether the mine is on public land open to mining. It could not be lawfully on state-owned land, nor within the boundaries of a Mexican or Spanish land grant, nor within a federal "railroad grant," nor within an In- dian reservation, though it might be within a public forest reserve if the rules and regulations thereof had been com- plied with. The problems of mining titles have become intricate and complicated.11
As stated, the mining laws of the United States did not, and do not, apply to lands within the boundaries of Span- ish or Mexican ranchos. The owners of these ranchos, whose titles had been confirmed by the United States and who had received their confirmatory patents, were the owners of the minerals as well as of the land. Hence dis- covery and development of a gold mine on a rancho by an enthusiastic 'forty-niner gave him no title nor a basis for title.
Rancho Las Mariposas, at the southernmost end of the Mother Lode, is the outstanding example of a Mexican rancho containing rich gold deposits and in which gold mines were located by invading prospectors. It was in the spring of 1849 that Colonel John C. Frémont set out from Los Angeles, with a party of Sonorans, to find out whether
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