The Notice of Location is your claim's birth certificate. Without it, your physical work in the field — the monuments you placed, the discovery point you marked — exists only in memory. The Notice is what transforms your act of location into a defensible legal right that can be bought, sold, inherited, or partnered.
Get it right the first time. Courts have voided claims over defective Notices, and there's no easy correction after the 90-day recording window closes.
The General Mining Act of 1872 established the right of any U.S. citizen to locate mining claims on open federal land. The Act itself says very little about what the notice must contain — it simply requires that the location be made "in the manner prescribed by state law." That delegation to state law is why requirements vary significantly from Nevada to Colorado to Alaska.
The Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) added the federal recording requirement — you must file a copy with the BLM in addition to the county recording. The interplay between the 1872 Act (substantive rights), FLPMA (federal recording), and each state's mining statute (form requirements) is what makes a Notice of Location look different in different states.
Despite state-by-state variation, these elements appear in virtually every western state's requirements:
| State | Recording Deadline | Special Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| California | 90 days to county | Discovery post required; must describe vein for lode; CCNHP form recommended |
| Nevada | 90 days to county + BLM | NRS 517; two corner markers minimum; no specific form required |
| Arizona | 90 days to county | ARS Title 27; four corners for placer; end lines for lode |
| Colorado | 60 days to county | CRS 34-43; includes demand for certificate after recording |
| Oregon | 60 days to county | ORS 517; metes and bounds required; two witnesses recommended |
| Alaska | 90 days to ADNR + BLM | State claims use Alaska DNR form; federal claims use BLM form; different systems |
Your first recording stop is the county courthouse. Bring your completed Notice of Location and the required filing fee (typically $10–$30). The clerk will stamp and record the document, assign it a book and page or instrument number, and return a certified copy to you. That certified copy is your proof of priority date.
If two people locate on the same ground, the one who recorded first with the county has priority — assuming both locations were otherwise valid. The recording date, not the location date, is what the county records reflect. Get there early.
Within 90 days of location (not 90 days from county recording — 90 days from when you put stakes in the ground), you must also file with the BLM State Office. Under FLPMA, failure to file with BLM within this window means the claim cannot be recorded — and an unrecorded claim is void against third parties, including subsequent locators.
Send BLM Form 3830-2 (Notice of Location), a copy of your county-recorded document, and a $40 filing fee to the BLM State Office. Some offices accept mail; some require in-person filing. Call ahead.
The hardest part of writing a Notice of Location is getting the legal description right. The PLSS description — something like "the N½ of the NW¼ of the NE¼ of Section 22, Township 14 North, Range 8 East" — requires knowing which PLSS parcel your claim sits on, down to the 20-acre aliquot level.
AuthoriProspector's Auto-Square feature reads the PLSS data for your GPS pin location and generates the legal description automatically, pre-populated in a properly formatted Notice of Location PDF ready for county recording.
AuthoriProspector overlays live BLM claims, 20-acre aliquot precision, USGS historic mine markers, and no-go zones on a single map. Tap any block to see who owns it — then stake and file from the field.
Use Auto-Square on AuthoriProspector →