This glossary explains the words you’ll run into on claim records, gold maps and prospecting guides, in plain English. The big ones get a full page of their own.
Jump to: Claims and the law | Reading land and maps | Where gold is found | Prospecting gear
Claims and the law
Abandoned claim
A claim the holder dropped, usually by not paying the yearly fee. Our maps call these closed claims. See our guide to abandoned gold claims.
Active claim
A claim that’s still in force in BLM’s records. The right to mine it belongs to the holder.
Assessment work
Work done on a claim to keep it. People who get a fee waiver have to do at least $100 of it on each claim every year.
BLM
The Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that keeps mining claim records and manages much of the public land in the West.
Casual use
Small work that barely disturbs the ground, like panning or running a hand or battery drywasher. It doesn’t cover earth-moving machines. It also doesn’t let you mine on someone else’s claim.
Claim jumping
Working or taking minerals from a valid claim that belongs to someone else.
Discovery
Finding a valuable mineral on a claim. A claim needs a real discovery to be valid.
General Mining Law of 1872
The federal law that still lets people stake mining claims on public land.
Locating a claim
Staking a claim: marking it on the ground and filing the paperwork. The person who does it is the locator.
Lode claim
A claim on minerals in solid rock, like gold in a quartz vein. Read more: what is a lode claim.
Maintenance fee
The yearly fee that keeps a claim going: $200 per lode claim, or $200 for each 20 acres of a placer claim, due on or before September 1.
Mill site
Up to 5 acres of land used to support a mining operation, like for processing. It doesn’t cover minerals.
Mining claim
A piece of federal land where someone holds the right to mine a mineral deposit. It isn’t ownership of the land.
Mining district
An area where miners set their own local rules in the early days. Many old district names are still used to describe gold country.
MLRS
BLM’s online Mineral and Land Records System, where you can look up claims. Our guide shows how to check a mining claim.
Notice of location
The paperwork that records a new claim. It’s due at BLM within 90 days of staking.
Open to mineral entry
Federal land where new claims can be staked. Land that’s been withdrawn, like a national park, is closed to new claims.
Patented claim
A claim that became private land. Read more: patented vs. unpatented mining claims.
Placer claim
A claim on loose minerals in sand and gravel. Read more: what is a placer claim.
Small miner waiver
A form that lets people with 10 or fewer claims skip the maintenance fee if they do the yearly assessment work. It’s due on or before September 1.
Tunnel site
An underground right of way on federal land, up to 3,000 feet long, used to reach a mineral deposit.
Unpatented claim
A claim on land that stays federal. Read more: what is an unpatented mining claim.
Reading land and maps
Meridian
A main north-south survey line. Every township and range in an area is counted from one.
MTRS
Short for meridian, township, range and section. It’s the code BLM uses to place a claim, and you’ll see it in our map popups.
Public land
Land owned by the federal government and managed by agencies like BLM and the Forest Service.
Quarter section
One fourth of a section, or 160 acres. Records name them by direction, like NE for northeast.
Section
A square of land about one mile on each side, or 640 acres. Our maps count claims by section.
Township and range
The grid used to survey land in the West. A township is a six-mile square holding 36 sections. Township numbers count north or south from a base line, and range numbers count east or west from a meridian.
Where gold is found
Bedrock
The solid rock under the sand and gravel. Gold is heavy, so it sinks until bedrock stops it.
Bench
A shelf of old gravel above today’s creek, left from when the creek ran higher. It can still hold gold.
Black sand
Heavy dark sand, mostly iron minerals, that stays in the pan with gold. Lots of black sand is a good sign, though it doesn’t promise gold.
Color
A speck of gold in your pan. “Getting color” means you found some.
Flour gold
Gold so fine it looks like dust. It’s hard to catch because water carries it easily.
Hard rock mining
Mining gold out of solid rock, which is the work done on a lode.
Lode
A vein or band of minerals in solid rock.
Mother lode
The main vein that feeds a gold area. California’s Mother Lode is a long belt of gold country in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Nugget
A natural lump of gold. There’s no set size, but it’s bigger than a flake.
Overburden
The dirt and gravel sitting on top of the gold-bearing layer.
Pay streak
A line of richer gravel in a placer deposit, often close to bedrock.
Picker
A piece of gold big enough to pick out of the pan with your fingers or tweezers.
Placer
A deposit of loose minerals that washed out of rock and settled in sand or gravel. It’s pronounced PLASS-er.
Quartz vein
A band of white quartz in rock. Quartz veins are the classic home of lode gold.
Tailings
The waste left after gold is taken out. Old piles of it are a sign that someone mined the area.
Prospecting gear
Classifier
A screen that sits on a bucket or pan and sorts out the big rocks.
Concentrates
The heavy stuff left after panning or sluicing: black sand, small rocks and, with luck, gold.
Drywasher
A machine that uses air instead of water to catch gold in dry dirt. See how to use a drywasher.
Gold pan
The basic tool: a shallow pan with ridges for washing gold out of gravel. See how to pan for gold.
Grizzly
A rough screen on a machine that keeps out bigger rocks.
Highbanker
A sluice box fed by a water pump, so you can work away from the creek’s edge. Rules for them differ by state.
Riffles
The ridges in a sluice or drywasher that catch heavy gold while lighter material moves on.
Rocker
An old wooden box you rock by hand to wash gravel. It’s also called a cradle.
Sluice box
A long box with riffles. Water runs through it, washes the light gravel away, and the gold stays behind. See our gold prospecting equipment guide.
Snuffer bottle
A small squeeze bottle that sucks up gold from your pan.
Suction dredge
A machine that vacuums gravel from a stream bed into a small sluice. Some states ban or tightly limit them, so check first.
See these words on a real map
Our Google Earth maps show active and closed lode and placer claims and old mines, section by section. Pick your state below to see what’s on its map, or read how the counts have changed in mining claims by state.