streams, and soil; also natural curiosities, as fossils or organic remains; also ancient works of art, as mounds, embankments, etc.; also improvements of every kind on the claim, as to their position, nature, extent, value, and character of permanence; also the position, nature, and extent of easements held under statutes, as rights of way, etc.—in brief, all facts as to the claim and its surroundings ascertainable by survey should be noted and recorded. Heights of hills, ridges, and banks of streams, depths of ravines, ascents and descents, size of buildings, and like dimensions should be recorded in feet. Inquiry and field examination should be made to a reasonable extent as to the nonmineral character of the lands, and results stated in the field notes, especially when presumption to the contrary may arise through presence in the locality of known mineral claims, surveyed or unsurveyed; for, if the contrary is asserted and maintained as to any portion at any stage in the proceedings to patent, an amended survey will be necessary. 20. Field notes must state how and by what visible evidences the surveyor identifies on the ground as authentic the locating monuments and corners of prior surveys, used or referred to in the entry survey. If evidence found agrees with the description furnished by your office, a short form may be used; for instance, "Which is a ganite stone, showing 10 ins. above ground, marked and witnessed as described by the surveyor general"; otherwise the full description as found will be stated. Such agreement in description is not always or necessarily conclusive; and in cases of misclosure the supposed corner may be spurious, or at least not official, and its position should be checked by lines run to undoubted corners. 21. With other information you will furnish the surveyor with listed descriptions of all alien claims in the neighborhood of the survey, to the extent of your records. But such information is not necessarily conclusive or complete, and the surveyor will note the position of the survey relative to all near-by and contiguous claims of any nature as monumented on the ground, that may come to his knowledge, making connections and retracements necessary for the purpose, and state the owners' names if known. 22. When a roadway through a homestead is exempted from listing, it is not held to defeat one entry to embrace tracts thus separated. The tracts will be designated, "Tract A," "Tract B," etc. The limits of the road or roads will constitute the boundaries of the tracts, and will be surveyed and marked as such, retaining one consecutive series of corner numbers for the entire survey. Alinement of the boundaries intersected by the road will be preserved, and connecting distances thereon between the tracts will be noted. A road exemption from a tract to be described as in section 32 will require a demarcation of the boundary of at least the components invaded by the exemption, as in the like case of a metes and bounds tract, requisite subdivision lines of sections involved being temporarily located preparatory thereto. And when field processes of such subdivisions render it convenient, other similarly described adjacent components may be included. The survey will receive a consecutive number in your series, and corners be marked accordingly. 23. When a portion of a stream or other body of water is a boundary of the tract, the same will be meandered at mean high-water mark between terminal meander corners, by noting the general courses and lengths along the sinuosities, without monuments at each change in direction of the meanders so run. (Monuments at the angle points would give the lines between them the character of a boundary, which would limit the tract and thereby deprive the applicant of the rights usually attaching to water frontage.) Also, in case it is intended to give an applicant the benefit of a water boundary and at the same time exempt a road along the bank, both sides of the road should be surveyed and monumented as herein prescribed, but in such a manner as to leave a strip of land to the applicant between the road and the meandered line, that the strip to which the benefits attach may appear upon the plat according to which patent is intended to issue. 24. Determination of the position of the metes-and-bounds survey relative to accepted section boundaries as these exist on the ground, including intersections therewith, and to section subdivision boundaries in certain cases, is incident to a complete survey. Without it segregations can not be made in your office when hereafter required. It may impose justifying retracements, and in some cases restoration resurveys and a limited section subdivision. Under normal conditions these will not be execessive. When extensive obliterations or gross inaccuracies in surveys are developed, the surveyor should make full report to your office through the proper channel, of conditions found and his thorough search for corners and their witnesses of record, including memorials, and await your further instructions. After considering facts and records, you may find it advisable to connect the metes-and-bounds survey to a locating monument and the latter to the nearest identified corner of the regular surveys involved. :25. The tract embraced in the survey must not exceed 160 acres in area, or 1 mile in length. If two or more contiguous listings are to be embraced in one entry, or in an entry and another "additional " to it under authorizing statutes, the total area and length are limited as stated. In harmony with a recent communication from the department, in which the subject of proper widths and lengths of entry surveys was fully discussed, the following instruction is stated: Any tract not exceeding 160 acres in area which may be contained in a square mile, the sides of which extend in cardinal directions, is understood to be within the meaning of the law. As it is also the instruction of the Forester in the National Forest Manual on Claims, etc., in effect February 1, 1912, and the application of the rule to four possible cases illustrated therein by sketches, it is not expected that surveys will be presented that you may not approve under the rule. 26. A survey must not embrace lands patented, and necessary retracements will be made to that end. Neither should it embrace other claims, surveyed or unsurveyed, or entered lands, unless with the full understanding on the part of the applicant that an amended survey will be required at his expense if necessary to eliminate conflicts not proper to be included in patent. Surveys should be conducted accordingly. 27. Conflict with another claim of any description will be ascertained by noting intersections with its boundaries, retracing the latter 6. If the nonmineral application is received on the applicant's appeal from the register's requirement of additional evidence because of the oil and gas conflict, the register should be affirmed, if all else is regular, subject to further right of appeal, if the oil and gas case still subsists, notwithstanding the oil and gas case may be subject to adverse action. 7. If the oil and gas party protests against the allowance of the nonmineral application with mineral reservation and section 29 waiver, the same should be disposed of in the usual way in accordance with Circular No. 1031, or where additional evidence of some sort is necessary of the oil and gas man, the usual practice should also be followed, unless the conflicting oil and gas case has the status calling for adverse action thereon, in which event the oil and gas case should be referred to division N with memorandum requesting that action be taken thereon, and division in interest be advised when final disposition is made in order that appropriate action may be taken on the conflicting case held in that division. 8. Where a nonmineral case, including public sale cases, is pending for action and division O reports the land involved to have been at one time embraced in an oil and gas case which has failed, the office is put on inquiry as to the oil and gas character of the land and the practice already in vogue in the divisions should be continued of drawing the canceled oil and gas case to see if the failure of the oil and gas case was due to a report from the Geological Survey to the effect that the land had no prospective value for oil and gas. If due to other reasons, then a call should be made on the Geological Survey, after stating all relevant facts, for a report as to whether or not the land has, at least, a prospective value for oil and gas. If the Geological Survey has reported or does report that the land is so valuable, such report is a sufficient basis for calling on the nonmineral applicant for a mineral reservation under the act of July 17, 1914. 9. When Division N reports the oil and gas case sent to that division as having been finally closed out, the section 29 waiver from the nonmineral claimant is no longer necessary, and if furnished should not be accepted, but whether the mineral reservation should be required of the nonmineral applicant if not furnished, will depend upon the Geological Survey's report as to the prospective value of the land. If already furnished, should be retained. 10. All public sale cases where the status sheet shows land to be covered by a pending oil and gas case should be rejected, subject to appeal, in accordance with the regulations, unless coming within the provisions of paragraph 4 hereof. • See Instructions of July 2, 1925, p. 1414. WILLIAM SPRY, Commissioner. 32. Unless there are road reservations (sec. 22), metes-and-bounds surveys are not required within accepted regular surveys in good standing when the tract to be listed is to be described by legal subdivisions, or as a quarter or a half of a quarter-quarter section or rectangular lotted tract, or as a quarter or a half of a quarterquarter-quarter section or rectangular lotted tract. But survey is required of metes-and-bounds parcels to be included therewith in listing and entry, in which case statutory contiguity must be obtained by a preliminary location of those regular boundaries that are also to bound the metes-and-bounds tract. 33. Manifestly, the execution of the survey must be subsequent in dates to those of your instructions. The survey will be an actual, independent survey made at the time in all its details, and not computed or compiled from former surveys official or otherwise. When discrepancies are developed, the prior surveys should be sufficiently retraced, and details of the retracement and resulting correct courses and distances appropriately recorded in field notes. 34. Field notes are to be prepared only on paper of the quality, size, and ruling in current use for regular surveys. They may be in writing or typewriting, in noncopying ink, using both sides of the paper, and in form for binding on the side. To be acceptable they must be clerically neat, not crowded, unmistakably legible, and free from erasures, corrections, or interlineations. Cut sheets will not be accepted, or those upon which writing appears beyond the ruled margins or within one-half inch of top or bottom edge. The sheets will be temporarily bound by stitching or fasteners admitting of removal without injury to the papers when future binding in books is contemplated. From the abbreviations authorized by the Manual of 1902, you will list to the surveyor only those which are applicable and convenient · in these surveys, to the exclusion of all other abbreviations, and instruct, and when necessary illustrate their proper and consistent use, especially in corner descriptions. 35. Field notes will have the following general arrangements: (a) The title page should eventually contain information of the character suggested by the following form: [Acts of June 11, 1906, August 10, 1912, and March 4, 1913] FIELD NOTES Homestead Entry Survey No. 506 situated in the Battlement National Forest in unsurveyed Section 30, Township 11 South, Range 93 West and surveyed Section 25, Township 11 South, Range 94 West of the Sixth Principal Meridian COLORADO Survey executed by John T. Monroe (state official designation). Under special instructions dated August 15, 1910. Survey commenced September 20, 1910. Survey completed September 25, 1910. North Dakota: Billings, Bowman, Burleigh, Divide, Dunn, Golden Valley, Grant, McHenry, McKenzie, McLean, Mercer, Morton, Mountrail, Pierce, Sheridan, Sioux, Slope, and Williams. Oklahoma: All. Oregon: Benton, Clatsop, Columbia, Coos, Curry, Douglas, Lane, Lincoln, Marion, Polk, Tillamook, Washington, and Yamhill. South Dakota: Bennett, Butte, Corson, Custer, Dewey, Fall River. Haakon, Harding, Jackson, Lawrence, Meade, Mellette, Pennington, Perkins, Stanley, and Ziebach. Utah: Carbon, Daggett, Duchesne, Emery, Garfield, Grand, Kane, Morgan, Rich, San Juan, Sanpete, Sevier, Summit, Uintah, Wasatch, Washington, and Wayne. Washington: Benton, Clallam, Cowlitz, Jefferson, King, Kittitas, Lewis, Mason, Skagit, Snohomish, and Whatcom. Wyoming: All. RAY LYMAN WILBUR, Secretary. REPORTS AS TO OIL AND GAS CHARACTER OF LANDS-WHEN REQUIRED DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, The COMMISSIONER OF THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE. DEAR MR. COMMISSIONER: Under date of June 11 last the department instructed you that it would be unnecessary to request the director of the Geological Survey to make a report pursuant to Order No. 349 relative to lands within the former Fort Peck Indian Reservation. You having informally requested further instructions, you are advised that the same rule applies to lands in other reservations where, prior to the opening of the lands to entry, there was a nonmineral classification pursuant to which the lands were entered. If a reservation was opened to entry without such classification having been first made, and the land is within a county named in Order No. 349, a request for a report should be made. In no case will it be necessary to request a report where the land is entered under the stock-raising homestead act or where the entry is made subject to the provisions and reservations of the act of July 17, 1914 (38 Stat. 509), as to oil and gas. Very truly yours, JOHN H. EDWARDS, |