Government Support of Private Claims to Public Minerals: Western Mineral Rights

Abstract

“Gold is where you find it,” said the old prospector. It has long been recognized, in one way or another, that it belongs to him who can find it and extract it, and that the rules of land tenure and use formed in an agrarian society would serve poorly to define legal rights. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the demand for gold was particularly high. Its vital significance to American economic growth is revealed in the fact that the chronic foreign trade deficit of the United States in these years was balanced by two main elements: capital imports and gold exports. Professor Libecap shows just how pragmatic Americans could be about the impact of economics upon law under such circumstances, and draws a picture of a land use code that proved as malleable as the glittering metal it called forth.