That time of year...

Every year claimholders have two deadlines… maintenance waiver by August 31 and affidavit of assessment due December 30.

The end of the year is near and we want to remind everyone to get the affidavit of labor/assessment filed at the county and also the Bureau of Land Management.

This document proclaims you are working on your claim. Some of the items which qualify for work performed include sampling, mapping and maintenance of boundaries, picking up trash and controlling noxious weeds. Each claimholder is responsible for $100 of work for each claim, which in this day and age doesn’t take long! You can perform the work yourself or pay someone else to do it.

If you are a new claimholder, you will notice that part of the filing fee when you register your claim goes toward the first year’s assessment. Therefore, the assessment form does not have to be filed. The BLM LR2000 site will show your claim as having assessment filed.

A lot of people drop the ball here… we see a lot of claims every year that assessment was not filed. The claim does not show as inactive until April because BLM gives you 90 days to appeal the decision. We’ve never heard of anyone winning that appeal… you may as well re-locate and pay BLM another $189, but at least they give you 90 days to do that before the claim is declared invalid.

I continue to transcribe and edit the Keets mine story. The Black Hills Pioneer newspaper has graciously allowed me to use their copyrighted material, so it will be as complete and accurate as possible.
So I’m going to keep this short… let me know if there are any other historic Deadwood stories you want to see. I would like to focus on early Deadwood so if you have a request I would prefer it pre-date 1900.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, and for reasons of our own we are hoping for a prosperous New Year!