The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1918-05-18
VERTICAL LINES VS.. APEX

Commenting on Senator Henderson's bill substituting We
al lines for the apex in determining mining rights the w
mucca Silver State says:
Senator Henderson OF Nevada has recently introduced
a bill in the senate that has far-reaching effect in the
mining states. Its purpose is to abolish the law known
as the "apex" law as applied 20 lode mining claims. The
law now permits the locator of a vein to follow it on its
downward course, even though the vein may diverge
from the vertical and pass beyond the lines of the claim
of the locator. If Senator Henderson's bill becomes a
law, owners of claims located after such a law goes
into effect will be limited to their downward working by
the claim lines.
The, supporters of the apex law argue that it is unjust
that a prospector should spend his time and money in
prospecting for and finding a vein, only to learn that
by its dip it passes beyond his side line, at which ne must
cease working. The argument would apply as well to
many other lines of industry. A stratum of placer gravel
may be many feet below the surface. 1t is necessary
for the prospector for such stratum to spend his time and
money i'm prospecting and sinking for it, but should he
find it, he is not permitted to work beyond the lines of
his placer claim. If veins were all regular in their for
nation, there would be more reason for the apex law,
but they are not regular. In someHnstances veins are
several hundred feet wide. If it happens that adjoining
claiSns owned by different locators have their common
side-line within such broad claim, interminable litiga-
ton results. Veins that are often in regular form in the
depths, split into several branches or forks as they ap-
proach the surface, thereby presenting as many appar-
ent apices. Several locators may in good faith locate
claims upon such several branches, believing that they
have each made a discovery, only to find that with depth
such branches converge, merge and become one vein,
and the shaft-houses of all but one of them must stand
as monuments to their blasted hopes.
The position of a vein is not usually known to the To-
Gator at the time he makes his location, for the reason
that it's apex is covered with over-burden, and sinking
and drifting is necessary to disclose the position OF the
vein. Often such work reveals the fact that the vein
passes out of the claim across one side-line. The locator
has made his location because of that vein. 1t is the
vein he discovered and is called his discovery vein. 1t
often happens that there is still another vein within the
same claim. usually called the secondary vein. 1t is
possible that the discovery vein may produce no ore OF
value and millions be extracted from the secondary
vein. Such has often occurred. The law of the apex, in
tended as a reward to the discoverer, in such instances,
gives him millions not discovered by him at the time he
made his location. We could with almost as much rea-
son give to the inventor of a carpet tack a patent right
upon a linotype machine.
In the light of present knowledge of vein formation,
the interminable litigation growing out of the apex law
and the recollection that in many instances violence and
bloodshed have resulted from contentious over it, we
should change from our present system to that of verti-
cal planes. Such change will of course only affect lode
mining claims located after the law %abolishing the apex
goes into effect, but if, as we suspect, a hundred claims
will hereafter be located for every one that has been To-
Gated thus far in the mining states, those now located
which give to their owners a vested property right in
the veins on the dip are negligible. 1t is to be hoped that
Senator Hendersons bill will pass and that the apex law
will be abolished, as it has been in all other nations
wherever used in the past.