Take the gold. Pay the public nothing.
A law signed by Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 still governs hardrock mining on public land — and it lets companies pull gold, silver, copper and uranium out of it without paying the public a cent in royalty.
Coal, oil and gas taken from federal land all pay a production royalty — 12.5% under the 2025 budget law. Hardrock minerals pay zero. The only money that changes hands is a small annual fee to hold the claim. This is the oldest and quietest of the mechanisms this hub tracks: not a land sold in a single deal, but a giveaway written into permanent law more than 150 years ago and never repealed.
What this page is about
The General Mining Law of 1872 still governs mining for “hardrock” minerals — gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, molybdenum, uranium — on federal public land. It lets any citizen prospect on open public land, stake a claim when they find a valuable deposit, and mine it. Unlike coal, oil and gas, hardrock mining pays no federal royalty on the minerals it takes. The public's land is mined; the public's share of what comes out is zero.
The only payments are a $125-per-claim annual maintenance fee and a small one-time location fee. Under the law's original “patent” system, a miner could even buy the land itself — surface and minerals — for $2.50 to $5 an acre, the 1872 price. This page grades that structure against the primary law and the Congressional Research Service.
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Take the gold. Pay the public nothing.
Under the General Mining Law of 1872, hardrock minerals — gold, silver, copper, uranium — taken from federal public land carry no federal royalty. Coal and oil/gas pay 12.5%. Hardrock pays zero.
Same public land, three different deals
The clearest way to see the giveaway is to line hardrock mining up next to the other things extracted from the exact same federal land. Coal, oil and gas pay a royalty. Hardrock pays none.
| Resource | Federal production royalty | Governed by |
|---|---|---|
| Oil & gas | 12.5% (restored from 16.67% in 2025) | Mineral Leasing Act; OBBBA 2025 |
| Coal | A set royalty rate (reduced in 2025) | Mineral Leasing Act; OBBBA 2025 |
| Hardrock (gold, copper, uranium…) | None — only a $125/claim annual fee | General Mining Law of 1872 |
Sources: Congressional Research Service, “Mining on Federal Lands: Hardrock Minerals” (RL33908); General Mining Law of 1872 (17 Stat. 91). Oil/gas and coal rates per the 2025 budget law — see The Fire-Sale Lease.
The record, claim by claim
Hardrock mining on federal public land pays no federal royalty on the minerals it extracts.
FACTThe General Mining Law of 1872 governs hardrock minerals — gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, molybdenum, uranium — on public-domain land. Unlike coal, oil and gas, which are leased and pay a percentage royalty on production, locatable hardrock minerals carry no federal production royalty at all. A company can extract and sell the minerals and owe the public nothing on the value taken. This is the central structural fact of the law and has been the target of reform efforts for decades.
The only recurring payment to hold a claim is a $125-per-claim annual fee, plus a $30 first-time location fee.
FACTTo hold a mining claim on public land, a claimant pays an annual maintenance fee of $125 per claim; first-time locators pay an additional $30 to locate and record. The fees are adjusted every five years for inflation; the figures were last set in 2004 (up from $100 and $25). Small operators with ten or fewer claims can even waive the maintenance fee by performing assessment work instead. These fees — not a royalty on what is mined — are the public's compensation.
Under the law's patent system, a miner could buy the land itself — surface and minerals — for $2.50 to $5 an acre.
FACTThe 1872 law let a claim holder who proved a valuable deposit file a 'patent' application and purchase full title to the land — both surface and mineral rights — at $2.50 per acre for placer claims and $5 per acre for lode claims. Those were the prices in 1872, and the statute never changed them. It is the clearest illustration of a law frozen in the 19th century governing 21st-century extraction.
Congress has frozen new patents through an annual moratorium since 1994, but has never repealed the underlying giveaway.
PROBABLY TRUESince 1994, Congress has attached a moratorium to the annual Interior appropriations bill that bars the government from issuing most new mining patents — stopping the $2.50-to-$5-an-acre land sales in practice. But the moratorium is temporary, renewed each year, and it does not touch the core of the law: the zero-royalty structure on extraction remains fully in force. We grade the moratorium PROBABLY TRUE pending a line-item confirmation in the current appropriations text; the zero-royalty structure it leaves untouched is FACT.
The 1872 law applies to all valuable mineral deposits except coal — the split that explains why coal pays and gold doesn't.
FACTThe General Mining Law of 1872 originally applied to all valuable mineral deposits except coal. Over time, energy and fertilizer minerals — coal, oil, gas, oil shale, phosphate, sodium, potassium — were moved into a leasing system (the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920) that charges royalties. Hardrock minerals were left under the 1872 location system, which does not. That historical split is why the public collects a royalty on the coal beneath a parcel but nothing on the gold or copper beside it.
Where the evidence is strong, and where it stops
- The zero royalty is not disputed. That hardrock mining on federal land pays no federal production royalty is a settled feature of the law, documented by the Congressional Research Service and at the center of every reform proposal for decades. It is a fact, not an estimate.
- This is structure, not a scandal. No one is breaking the law by mining under it; the giveaway is the law working as written. The story is that a 19th-century statute still sets the terms, and that repeated attempts to add a royalty have failed.
- The patent land-sale is mostly frozen. The $2.50-an-acre purchase of public land has been blocked in practice by an annual moratorium since 1994. We keep that distinction: the land-buying piece is largely paused; the no-royalty extraction piece continues.
- We do not put a dollar figure on the loss. Estimates of how much royalty the public forgoes each year exist, but they vary with metal prices and methodology, and we have not verified one to our standard. We assert the structure, not a specific annual number.
The giveaway that never had to be voted for
The other cases this hub tracks required an action — a proclamation, a budget bill, a lease sale. This one requires nothing at all. The 1872 law is already on the books, so the public's share of hardrock minerals stays at zero by default, year after year, unless Congress affirmatively changes it — and for over 150 years it has not. When the monument cuts reopen protected land to mining claims, this is the regime those claims fall under: stake it, mine it, keep the proceeds. That is the quietest mechanism in the Looting the American Public hub — a giveaway that runs on inertia.
Questions worth taking seriously
Do mining companies really pay nothing?
They pay no federal production royalty on the hardrock minerals they extract — no percentage of the gold, copper, or uranium value goes to the public. They do pay a small annual claim fee ($125/claim), ordinary taxes, and in some cases state-level charges. But on the federal royalty that coal, oil, and gas all pay, hardrock pays zero.
Can a company still buy public land for $5 an acre?
Mostly not, in practice. The $2.50–$5-per-acre patent purchase is still in the 1872 statute, but Congress has blocked new patents through a moratorium renewed in the annual Interior spending bill every year since 1994. The land-buying piece is largely frozen; the no-royalty extraction piece is not.
Why does coal pay a royalty but gold doesn't?
History. The 1872 law covered all valuable minerals except coal. In 1920, Congress moved coal, oil, gas, and several others into a leasing system that charges royalties, but left hardrock minerals under the old 1872 location system, which doesn't. That split — not economics or logic — is why the public collects on the coal beneath a parcel but nothing on the copper beside it.
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