Stephen Johnson Field

“ It often happens that for the development of a mine upon which several claims have been located, expenditures are required exceeding the value of a single claim, and yet without such expenditures the claim could not be successfully worked. In such cases it has always been the practice for the owners of different locations to combine, and to work them as one general claim ”

“ These rules prescribed the extent of ground which miners could severally appropriate for mining, and the conditions upon which such ground could be acquired and held. They bore a general similarity in different districts, varying only according to the extent and character of the mines. They all agreed in one particular,-in recognizing discovery and appropriation as the source of title, and development by working as the condition of continued possession. The first discoverer could derive no benefit from his discovery unless he followed it up by work for the development of his claim ”

“ With the exception of the extension of the flume over the premises, and their use as a place of deposit for the waste material from the adjoining claims, it was not shown that either he or his grantors ever did any work upon them, or ever had possession of them. He insisted, however, that this extension of the flume and use of the premises were sufficient to give him the right of possession under that clause of the statute which provides that where several mining claims are held in common the labor or expenditure required may be made on any one of them. ”