Although the placer mining laws in themselves placed no obstacle, apparently, in the way of a group of locators securing an almost endless quantity of land by this method, as a matter of fact, the decisions of the higher courts of various States took a different view of the matter. Here is how the tribunals ruled in several well-known cases:
"A placer location, even though taken by legal subdivisions, is required by law to be staked or marked on the ground."—Gregory vs. Pershbaker; 73, Cal., 109.
"The location of placer claims, using the names of persons as co-locators who are not intended to have any real interest, but who are to convey the rights after location (commonly called dummy locators) is a fraud upon the Government."—Mitchell vs. Cline; 84, Cal.. 409.
"A mere posting of notice on a ridge of rocks cropping out of the earth, or on other ground, that the poster has located thereon a mining claim, without any discovery or knowledge on his part of the existence of metal there or in its immediate vicinity, would be justly treated as a mere speculative proceeding, and would not of itself initiate any right. There must be something beyond a mere guess on the part of the miner to authorize him to make a location which will exclude others from the ground, such as the discovery of the precious metals in it, or in such proximity to it as to justify a reasonable belief in their existence."—Erhardt vs. Boaro; 113, U. S., 527.
Beginning at a point a few miles north of Oroville, the foregoing locators had filed on a strip of land for five miles on either side of the North Fork of the Feather river to its intersection with the east branch of the stream; thence along the latter to the town of Shoo Fly, in Plumas county, where Spanish Creek empties into the east branch of Feather river. Later they continued their operations by covering practically all the territory existing between that point and Beckwith Pass, in spite of the howl of disapproval that was raised against their unwarranted proceedings. It seems they took scant heed of existing rights, but filed indiscriminately over everything that came in their path, including private property of all kinds, patented ground, tracts embraced in railroad grants, besides everything else that got in their way, upon the broad and impartial basis that all was fish that came to their nets.
The locations, when actually made in the field by Surveyor B. L. McCoy and his crews, comprised the posting of notices on contiguous corners of quarter sections, along the section and township lines. The notices were on printed blanks of the simplest form, filled in with the legal subdivisions claimed, and with the names of the same eight locators constantly repeated, except in a few instances. Two witnesses were generally provided from the surveyor's crew.
A close inspection of the ground afterward by one of the field assistants of the State Mining Bureau indicated that only a limited portion of the notices were actually posted, the balance being simply "paper locations" put on record but not placed on the ground. None of the location notices recited the discovery of mineral, described corner stakes, or in fact carried out any of the technical provisions of the statutes.
While the locations were manifestly invalid, they answered the scarecrow purpose for which they were intended, and as a result the region affected by their iniquitous touch has ever since been closed to prospectors and consequent mineral development. It is seldom that an honest miner, intending to engage in the legitimate calling of his pursuit, will seek to enter a field where there is strong probability of endless litigation; so the consequences are that Yard and his associates have been permitted for the past six years to maintain a genteel system of blackmail in the interest of the Goulds.
What adds to the shame of the situation is the fact that members of the California Miners' Association, particularly Edward H. Benjamin, the secretary of the latter organization, have aided and abetted the scheme to tie up these mineral lands. Yard was shrewd enough to realize that it was necessary to secure the sanction of some similar body in order to cloak his operations with the appearance of genuineness, hence made Secretary Benjamin Vice-President of the "North California Mining Company," which he had organized also as onePage 434
