A placer claim is a federal mining claim on loose minerals, like gold in sand and gravel. It gives the holder the right to mine that deposit, but it doesn’t make the land theirs.
Placer is pronounced PLASS-er. The word covers gold that has washed out of solid rock and settled somewhere else, usually in a creek, an old stream bed or a gravel bench. It’s the kind of gold you can find with a pan, a sluice box or a drywasher, so it’s the claim type most small prospectors care about.
What a placer claim covers
BLM defines placer claims by what they leave out. A placer claim covers “all forms of deposit, excepting veins of quartz, or other rock in-place.” Anything still locked in solid rock falls under a lode claim instead. Almost everything else goes under a placer claim, so these claims aren’t only for gold. Other valuable loose minerals can be staked this way too. Plain sand and gravel can’t, because federal law took common materials like those off the list in 1955.
How big a placer claim can be
- One person or company: up to 20 acres.
- A group of 8 or more people: up to 160 acres, called an association placer.
- Shape: it usually follows the public land survey lines, so many placer claims are neat squares and rectangles on a map.
What a placer claim costs
To file a new placer claim with BLM, you pay a $25 processing fee, a $49 location fee, and a $200 maintenance fee for each 20 acres or part of 20 acres. A 20-acre claim comes to $274, plus whatever your county charges to record it. Your paperwork is due at BLM within 90 days of staking the claim. Your state may set its own, shorter deadline for recording it at the county.
After that, the holder pays $200 per 20 acres on or before September 1 each year. People who hold 10 or fewer claims can file a waiver and do at least $100 of work on the claim instead. BLM keeps the current numbers on its mining claim fees page, so check there before you pay.
Placer claim vs. lode claim
| Placer claim | Lode claim | |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Loose minerals in sand, gravel and old stream beds | Minerals in solid rock, like gold in a quartz vein |
| Most size allowed | 20 acres per person, 160 acres for 8 or more people | 1,500 feet long and 600 feet wide |
| How it’s laid out | Usually along survey lines | Measured from the discovery point along the vein |
| Yearly fee | $200 for each 20 acres | $200 per claim |
| How gold comes out | Pans, sluices, drywashers, dredges | Drilling, blasting, tunnels and crushing |
Where the placer claims are
About 13% of active claims in the 12 western states are placer claims, and about 85% are lode claims. The mix changes a lot from state to state. Placer claims make up about 42% of lode and placer claims in California and about 36% in Oregon, but only about 7% in Idaho and New Mexico.
| State | Active placer claims | Active lode claims |
|---|---|---|
| Nevada | 20,166 | 245,728 |
| Utah | 13,361 | 28,243 |
| California | 10,477 | 14,327 |
| Wyoming | 6,555 | 34,642 |
| Arizona | 6,582 | 55,915 |
| Oregon | 3,615 | 6,489 |
| Idaho | 2,911 | 37,712 |
| Montana | 2,779 | 15,467 |
| Colorado | 2,179 | 11,423 |
| New Mexico | 983 | 13,448 |
| South Dakota | 629 | 8,275 |
| Washington | 339 | 2,096 |
The counties with the most placer claims in the big gold states are San Bernardino in California (about 4,500), Nye and Esmeralda in Nevada (about 4,300 and 4,200) and Yavapai in Arizona (about 2,300).
Counts: Gold Maps Online analysis of BLM mining claim records, October 2026. Claim records don’t say which mineral a claim is for, so these are mining claims of all kinds, not only gold.
Can you pan on someone else’s placer claim?
Not without the holder’s permission. The land stays public, so you can usually walk across it or camp there if the area allows it. The minerals are a different story: the right to mine them belongs to the claim holder, and taking gold from a valid claim is called claim jumping. Before you dig, check for active claims with our guide on how to check a mining claim.
How to spot placer claims on our maps
Active placer claims are the orange boxes on our Google Earth maps, and green boxes are placer claims that were staked and later dropped. Those closed claims are worth a look, and our guide to abandoned gold claims explains why. Pick your state below to see what’s on its map.
More words explained in our gold prospecting glossary.