Category: Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is a federal office under the US Department of Interior. The BLM manages and conserves public land. Along with managing national monuments / trails / etc, defending against fires on public land and protecting wild horses, the BLM manages a variety of claim types for developing public land such as mining, energy, grazing, and recreation.

Understanding Patent Ownership

by Lizette Twain on July 12, 2015 in Bureau of Land Management, The Land Patents • 4 Comments

We receive lots of emails from people who find their name or a relative’s name on our site and want to know if this means they have some right to the land listed under that name. The short answer is, “if you have to ask, then probably not” but the complete answer deserves the time and attention that is best…

Understanding BLM Administrative Areas

by Lizette Twain on April 9, 2015 in Bureau of Land Management, The Land Patents • 0 Comments

We have added a new way to browse and explore patents: by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Administrative Area. To give context to this new feature, we wrote this handy explanation. Summary Nearly a quarter of a billion acres – about one-eighth of the landmass of the USA – is administered by the BLM. These public lands & resources contributed…

Understanding Townships

by Lizette Twain on February 11, 2015 in Bureau of Land Management, History, The Land Patents • 2 Comments

This entry focuses on a part of our earlier discussion, Understanding Location Data. For greater context on what we will be addressing, please read that post first. One of the more confusing aspects of the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) is the concept of “townships.” A “township” can refer to two different things. Both are part of the PLSS measurement system but have…

Understanding Location Data

by Lizette Twain on January 4, 2015 in Bureau of Land Management

Claims handled by the Bureau of Land Management are not mapped by latitude and longitude, as many maps now use. Instead, many of these claims harken back to an older form of surveying called the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), a measurement system that may seem confusing to the uninitiated, but was a great step forward in the time that it…