Mining Claim Fees Going Up Again

[Clay Diggins]

The BLM posted a notice to the Federal Register at 1 am on Saturday morning raising the maintenance and location fees... effective today July 1.
You can read and download the notice here:

Federal Register :: Request Access

Mining claim annual fees are now $200 per year for each lode, millsite or tunnel site claim and $200 per each 20 acres of placer claim. A single 160 acre placer claim now has $1600 in fees due annually! Until 1993 the same placer claim was only $15.

Location fees are going up as well. The base location fee is now $49 plus the $25 filing fee. A single mining claim location now requires a mandatory $274 fee payment to BLM (no small miner waiver in the first year of a mining claim).

If you already paid your annual maintenance fee for mining year 2025 you will need to pony up the additional $35 by August 31 or you will receive a deficiency warning notice and could lose your claim if you don't respond timely. If you are locating a claim today you will need to pay the full $274 location fees, your county recording fees plus the cost of staking.

This time of year Land Matters distributes their Annual Federal Mining Claims Filing Requirements instructions with a flow chart to guide you. We did update the fee requirement on that handout to help claim owners understand the current requirements. You can download a copy of the PDF file here. Please feel free to share this and help educate your fellow miners.

Heavy Pans

 

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[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

You need to find some gold just to break even. And this seems to push recovery into the the hands of bigger operations. Less puttering around for fun.

 

[Clay Diggins]

You need to find some gold just to break even. And this seems to push recovery into the the hands of bigger operations. Less puttering around for fun.

Small miners (those with 10 or fewer mining claims) can hold their claims for $15 per year plus the cost of a county recording after their first year.

Puttering around for fun is perfectly OK on a mining claim as is camping and picnicking - not just for the claim owner but for the public as well. None of that has anything to do with the fact that the mining claim is only legally held on the force of it's discovered potential mineral value. If the claim doesn't have enough valuable minerals to pay the fees it's not a valid mining claim.

You don't need a mining claim to putter around for fun. Most of the public lands are open to the public for prospecting. IF you find a valuable mineral deposit while prospecting open public land that is when a mining claim might be a good choice.

The bigger operations will be paying to their BLM State offices about 22 million MORE dollars each year with this new fee. Mining fees don't go into the general fund but are kept at the BLM State office for their use. $$$

Heavy Pans

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Side Note:
Clay said:
“Puttering around for fun is perfectly OK on a mining claim as is camping and picnicking - not just for the claim owner but for the public as well……”

Just for the folks new to mining that might read this some time later, I don’t think Clay is saying that the public can putter around prospecting for fun on a valid mining claim. They obviously cannot.

 

[Tesorodeoro]

Thanks for the heads up. That extra fee is going to mess a bunch up folks up this year probably. So to be clear..folks that claimed a small miner waiver will not be owing an extra $35?