Land Patents Are Gold Mine for Residents

A federal agent astride a horse delivered long-awaited land patents to this tiny ghost town of gold miners and shopkeepers Friday, kicking off Independence Day for thousands.

“This was quite an accomplishment. This sort of thing normally happens in Sacramento or Washington,” said Brenda Ingram, owner of the Cottage Hotel Bed & Breakfast.

Several thousand tourists and townspeople began the day with a blast of explosives and a series of speeches by government folk who described the event as long overdue, but appropriate for the Fourth of July.

The celebration was the result of an unprecedented compromise in which the federal government deeded 56 lots overlying old gold claims to squatters who have been living on them for years.

“Now I have something that I can either leave to my children or my grandkids, or I can sell,” said Bob Pruett, owner of the 1896-vintage Mercantile Store and former owner of the Lexington claim underlying much of this picture-book frontier town.

Pruett and his wife, Ann, made the “Randsburg solution” possible by giving up their claim.

The Bureau of Land Management, in turn, is signing over land patents to occupants for roughly $500 an acre--enough to cover costs of the project so taxpayers don’t have to, said Linn Gum, the BLM geologist who engineered the solution.

“There’s never been a patent issued anywhere but a state capital or Washington, so it’s pretty significant, historically,” Gum said.

The Mercantile Store, one of about 40 Randsburg buildings, was designated an official patent bureau for the day. One of the government officials from Washington (BLM assistant director Hord Tipton) came out to sign the papers.

Using satellite data, surveyors staked claims originally marked by rocks or buildings, whittled by the eternal wind.

Pruett, who began mining here in 1953, claimed first place in line for the hand-over ceremony.

Pruett paid $6,600 to secure his property. Clara and Charlie Salwasser of Charlie’s Ore House paid $1,500.

“By the time we leave at the end of the day, this will be a legitimate town,” Gum said. “When these folks go to bed they won’t have to worry any more about Big Brother telling them to get out of town.”

The day’s festivities were complete with a few “gunslingers,” chuck wagons, townsfolk dressed in period costume and burros rides. Festival-goers could even pan for gold--or fool’s gold.

When gold was discovered in 1895, miners named it for the rich Witwatersrand of South Africa. A year later, when the booming camp needed schools and a post office, they built the service town of Johannesburg a mile downhill.

Why cling to a treeless mountain, surrounded by mine tailings, baked by 110-degree temperatures, whipped by wind?

“Why, the whole town is right on top of a gold mine,” Pruett said.

Behind her counter, Clara Salwasser held up a vial: 9.2 grams of flake, about enough to fill a packet of sugar. She paid about $10 a gram for it.

Every week or so, a prospector drifts in with a trace of flake, which she buys to package and resell.

“You either love it or you hate it,” Salwasser said. “Most of us love it. We’ve paid for our plot over at the cemetery in Joburg. We’re lifers.”