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Show Moah Prospectors Meet To Discuss Overstating ' Independent prospectors in the Moab area attended a meeting Monday evening in the Grand county courthouse to discuss a problem which may be developing in the area ar-ea due to the rapid move to stake new ground. Some thirty prospectors, along al-ong with Moab attorneys, Harry Snow and Robert II. Ruggeri, discussed the problem prob-lem of "overstaking" on ground that had previously been staked and recorded. According to comments a: the meeting, most of the ground in the Grand county area has been covered quite heavily by prospectors dur- ing the past year and a half, and current efforts underway to stake large blocks of claims may be resulting in some previously recorded claims being overstaked. Prospectors were advised at the meeting to immediately check the status of their I claims to see if overstaking )k had occurred. They were fur-? fur-? ther advised to make sure their claims were legally filed fil-ed and recorded. It was decided de-cided that in the event over-staking over-staking had occurred, a contact con-tact should immediately be made with the parties conducting con-ducting the current blocking, stating that the claims in question were valid and over- staking practices on the property pro-perty in question should ini-) mediately be stopped. The problem which brought about the meeting Monday was similar to problems existing ex-isting in the Southeastern Utah area in the middle '50's, when nearly every foot of available av-ailable ground was staked by uranium prospectors. Invalid claims which were staked as far back as 1954 complicate the problem at present. In some places the claim stakes still remain on the ground that has not held valid mining min-ing claims for a number of years. A representative of a firm currently doing large blocking block-ing in Grand county was invited in-vited to the Monday meeting to discuss the problem with local area prospectors. Ho stated it was not the intention inten-tion of his company to locate on any property where valid existing claims were located. He stated that in the event overstaking had taken place., the new claims were not valid due to the existence of previously pre-viously staked property. Local Lo-cal prospectors maintained that even though this might be the case in a court of law the existence of overstaking might possibly create some cloud on the validity of a claim, and made selling it more difficult. Recording of mining claims is not required by law until thirty days following actual staking. It was pointed out by legal counsel at the meeting, however, that the Utah Supreme Su-preme Court had stricken even ev-en this requirement, which would indicate that no time limit was required for recording re-cording a claim. It was pointed out that surveying sur-veying of claims, and filing maps with them, was helpful help-ful in maintaining valid ownership. |