Stephen Johnson Field

“ Land embraced within a town-site on the public domain, when unoccupied, is not exempt from location and sale for mining purposes; its exemption is only from settlement and sale under the pre-emption laws of the United States. Some of the most valuable mines in the country are within the limits of incorporated cities, which have grown up on what was, on its first settlement, part of the public domain ”

“ Whatever right, therefore, the government possessed to use or dispose of the property, freed from any claim of the defendants, it could pass to its grantee.
The principle invoked is that one should be estopped from asserting a right to property upon which he has, by his conduct, misled another, who supposed himself to be the owner, to make expenditures. It is often applied where one owning an estate stands by and sees another erect improvements on it in the belief that he has the title or an interest in it, and does not interfere to prevent the work or inform the party of his own title. ”

“ Exploration in the vicinity for other mines is pushed in such case by new-comers with vigor, and is often rewarded with the discovery of valuable claims. To such claims, thougs within the limits of what may be termed the site of the settlement or new town, the miner acquires as good a right as though his discovery was in a wilderness, removed from all settlements, and he is equally entitled to a patent for them. ”

“ Where ejectment is founded upon either of these instruments,-the patent of the government or the deed of an individual,-the question being which of the parties has the legal title, it is irrelevant to introduce evidence to show that one of them ought to have had it, and might be able to get it, by a proceeding in some other tribunal or in some other form of action. ”

“ Indeed, the discovery of a rich mine in any quarter is usually followed by a large settlement in its immediate neighborhood, and the consequent organization of some form of local government for the protection of its members. ”

“ It remains to notice the defense of estoppel. The answer of the defendants alleges that Starr, the patentee, was living in Leadville from 1860 until the patent was issued to him in 1879, and was cognizant of the improvements made and of the large sums of money expended on the premises; that he and his grantors fraudulently remained quiet in respect to their ownership of mining claims there, and, from August, 1870, to the time of their application for a patent, never made known, either to the city of Leadville or to the defendants, that he or they claimed a right to any portion of the land ”