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All Veins Lodes & Ledges Throughout Their Entire Depth: Geology and the Apex Law in Utah Mines

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William T. Parry's All Veins, Lodes, and Ledges Throughout Their Entire Depth: Geology and the Apex Law in Utah Mines, is a small but important book about Utah's forgotten mining history and the complexities inherent in extracting mineral wealth from the ground.

Divided into twelve chapters, [1.Discovery is Not Enough 2. Acquisition and Disposal of Federal Mining Lands 3. Legalizing Mining Claims 4. Mining Rights beyond Surface Rights 5. The Making of Ore Deposits 6. Mining Beneath a Claim 7. Little Cottonwood Mining District: The Claim Must Match the Mine 8. Tintic Mining District: The Vein Must Have Recognizable Boundaries 9. Bingham Mining District: Mineralization Lodes Must be Continuous 10. Ophir Mining District: Extralateral Rights Need Not Be Advertised 11. Park City Mining District: Monuments Take Precedent Over Descriptions 12. The Apex Law Today] Parry lays a foundation in the first six chapters to help explain the specific lessons learned in the following five chapters. Nearly every major mining district in Utah is represented here and a legal decision drawn and explained that illustrates the difficulty of deciding conflicting ownership claims of adjacent properties under the apex law. Legal precedents are extracted one each, from examples from the Little Cottonwood, Tintic, Bingham, Ophir and Park City mining districts. His last chapter provides observations on the state of apex law today. Parry presents some excellent graphics to give the reader a big picture of the lay of the land in Utah, putting into context geologic structures, forces, and history, including a schematic model of Tintic/Bingham ore deposition, and several geologic maps, which together with shaded relief maps and historic photographs give the book a rich visual component that makes scientific concepts easy to understand and "see."

No mention is made of the litigation surrounding the famous Emma Mine in Little Cottonwood Canyon [whose stock promotion and marketing to England nearly caused an international uproar] because the litigation did not involve extralateral rights but instead whether promoters knew that the vein at depth faulted and disappeared.

Utah mining areas and geology contain a perfect wonderland of examples to illustrate the growth and development of precious metal mining law. Utah has deposits of classic veins, in replacement zones, and in porphyry disseminated deposits.

His geologic explanations are lucid and easy to grasp Less convincing, however, are some of his legal conclusions. "All prospecting and mining of gold on public lands after its discovery in California in 1848 was actually done illegally. Miners were technically trespassing on public lands." All Veins, p. 11.. His conclusion is unsupported and suspect. Later on same page, Parry states that there were absolutely no statutory or even common-law principles or rules to guide mining rights. But on p 14, Parry admits that Stewart's bill to regulate prospecting and mining on public lands grew from customs and common law of the miners.

Among Parry's most glaring oversights pertain to William Morris Stewart, claimed by most to be the creator of the apex rule for settling miner's claim disputes. The language "each claim shall include all the dips, spurs, angles, and variations of the vein," is Stewart's. This language became known as the apex law. Stewart's role in the Nevada County mining district law is skipped over in Parry's discussion found on p. 15 of his work. Parry gets the Senator's birth and death dates wrong. "William Stewart, the Father of Federal mining law, was born in 1827" All Veins, p.13 Some researchers have the birth year at 1825 See Ruth Hermann, Gold and Silver Colossus: William Morris Stewart and his Southern Bride Daves Printing and Publishing, Sparks, Nevada 1975, p. 1.

Parry states "Reelected in 1885 and served two more terms. He made Washington his home until his death in 1908...." All Veins, p. 13. Parry completely skips over the Senator's trip back to Nevada in 1905 after his second term eager to make another fortune in the boom town of Rhyolite, Nevada. [By August of 1908 Stewart had made that fortune, estimated at $250,000 and only then retired to Washington, where on March 30, 1909 he underwent a minor operation for "enlarged glands," and died on April 23, 1909 from the adverse effects of an anesthetic]

Parry does include a one page glossary of eleven mining terms, but oddly "apex" is not listed as one of the them. All Veins includes a list of references, and an index, but no detailed footnotes. Instead, the source and page number are listed in parentheses in the body of the text of each chapter.

Parry also states and quotes Maley as the source to back up the contention that newly discovered lodes are less likely to be classic veins, however some explanation as to why would have been appropriate and certainly within Parry's area of expertise. His chapter 5 on the making of ore deposits, is a superbly written overview of the state of the art in ore genesis as it applies to Utah. But Parry only hints there that ore concentrations as found in classic veins are going to be the exception, rather than the rule, in future ore discoveries. New deposits tend to be disseminated ones, and not high-grade. Maley also suggests that apex law is dormant because earlier cases have provided direction for most the possible situations, argues that many companies now solve potential problems through vertical sideline agreements, and lastly believes that most new deposits tend to be larger, irregularly formed and lack defined boundaries. In other words, they aren't vein deposits.

Parry claims that since the early 1900s there have been few significant court cases concerning conflicts over extralateral rights. This is a tautology, especially if one observes that with the maturing of a mining district comes ownership consolidation, and much less litigation. Vertical sideline agreements are mentioned on p128, the second to the last paragraph of the book, without much hurray, and without explaining what they are and what they do. [Sidestepping apex law problems, sideline agreements allow claimants to voluntarily agree that their rights to follow veins end at the vertical extension of any sidelines] The first sideline agreement was used in 1881 and became common in Arizona, at Leadfield, Colorado, and at Tonopah and Goldfield, Nevada.

As for the debate over apex law, Parry starts a dialogue but does not finish it. Many geologists, engineers, and lawyers believed that the apex law was faulty and should be corrected. Parry, All Veins, p. 126. Quoting Horace Winchell as a prime geological expert, Parry implies that nothing good comes from the apex law. Horace Winchell was a mining engineer, expert witness, and contemporary of Rossister Raymond who came to the conclusion that the apex law ought to be abolish. Winchell wrote several doggerels about his feelings toward the law, and ultimately was hired during one apex law case in Butte, Montana to survey the mine. As a result of preparing for apex litigation, it is generally conceded that new and additional ore bodies at Butte were discovered. Were it not for this litigation, these new resources might not have been discovered at all. Parry recognizes on page 69 that one of the important consequences of litigation was the discovery of large important orebodies by both parties during the development work preparatory to the trial, but stops short of crediting apex law with this side benefit.

Parry reminds Utah readers that one of our favorite sons, Senator Reed Smoot, introduced an amendment to Section 2322 Revised Statutes that would make it impossible to follow an ore body beyond the claim boundary lines. The amendment failed, but Parry does not explore nor give any reasons for its failure.

Previous works like Clark Spence's Mining Engineers and the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade 1849-1933 [which Parry cites] do explain why apex law had many detractors but a long and healthy lifespan that survived amendments and calls for its repeal. Parry does not mention the Mining and Scientific Press report of 1917 that concluded that of 5,808 mining law cases, only 1.9% [115] were apex law-related.

Justice Field, in his Eureka-Richmond decision [a Nevada case] stated that the mining laws were not drawn by geologists or for geologists. They were not framed in the interests of science and consequently with scientific accuracy in the use of terms. They were framed for the protection of miners in the claims which they had located and developed, and should receive such a construction as will carry out this purpose.

Between vertical sideline agreements, the maturation of mining districts and the attendant consolidation of ownership, disputes between adjacent claimowners drastically diminished. Law may not fit the geologic certitudes of today, but it did and does smooth out the vagaries of human nature.

Noting the diversity of opinion of engineers and geologists, Parry concludes that they were not objective, they were influenced by the consulting fees they earned, and they did it [testify and provide the courts with conflicting testimony] for the money... Such sweeping condemnation attacks such impartial experts as James Talmage, whose testimony was used in the Grand Central v. Mammoth case cited by Parry in Chapter Eight. Drawing such conclusions is surprising from someone who mentors future geologists and geophysicists. It is not uncommon in law or science to find conflicting testimony. Plate tectonics in the 1970s was a theory not widely accepted and dismissed as a childish observation that the continent of Africa looks like it could fit next to South America if pushed back together. While generally accepted today, Pangea was once wild speculation. Thus geologists could and did have honest differences of opinion. In the 1880s to 1900s the genesis of ore deposition was not understood as it is today, a fact Parry brings out on p 23 of his work.

Straddling good ground, Parry follows his vein capturing geology, biography and jurisprudence in an engaging manner. His is not a legal casebook nor a geology textbook, but he borrows enough from each discipline to put each into context. Neither is biography overlooked in this small but important volume.

In spite of these few criticisms this book is an excellent and much needed first strike and lays claim precisely at the apex, or highest point of the vein, of mining history in Utah. It is a welcomed addition to the small but growing bookshelf of Utah mining history. To fully and completely understand mining in Utah, one needs a firm grasp of geology, biography and mining law. Parry aptly assays each of these elements and sheds new first light on the interrelationships of these forgotten and misunderstood parts of our past. When one visits the sites mentioned in this book, one is immediately struck with the impression something grand occurred there. Parry's volume opens the apex of an historical vein and lets his reader peek into this past as it dips downward into the earth. But unlike his conclusion, that apex law is not applicable today, one hopes that he and others will follow this vein in all its "dips, spurs, and angles" to continue to shed more light and understanding of Utah's forgotten mining heritage.