Under the General Mining Act of 1872,30 U.S.C. secs. 22-47, any person may enter public lands, locate a claim, and obtain title to remove all similar minerals throughout the claim. The person can also obtain a "patent" to the land, which allows transfer of title to the land from public to private ownership. This process applies primarily to hard rock minerals, gold, and gems, and does not apply to peat, coal, oil, gas, or common materials, such as gravel or sand. Miners are not charged a fee for access to hard rock minerals on federal lands, even though in 1990 the value of such minerals extracted from public lands approached US $1.2 billion.

The complete article is no longer available

Note: Even though this article is found at a Canadian site, it deals with and is about the United States Regulations.
A much more comprehensive article is available at:
http://www.cnie.org/nle/mine-4.html

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