Temescal Oil Mining & Development Co. v. Salcido

GRAY, C.

This action is brought to quiet title to a certain tract of land in Ventura County consisting of the north half of the northwest quarter and the southeast quarter of the

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northwest quarter of section 12, township 4 north, range 18 west, San Bernardino meridian. Both parties claim the land under oil-mining locations.

The ease was tried with a jury, and resulted in a verdict and judgment for defendants. Plaintiff appeals from the judgment and from an order denying its motion for a new trial.

Defendants’ claim embraces the whole of the northwest quarter of said section 12, and was located first in 1891, and again in 1896. Plaintiff’s claim was not properly located until 1900, and at the time of such location there is evidence showing that defendants had previously, in January, done the assessment-work required by law for that year.

1. Appellant contends first that defendants’ locations were not so marked upon the ground that they could be readily traced. The evidence shows that the quarter-section located was surveyed out carefully by a competent surveyor employed by the locator; that the northwest corner of section 12, being the northwest corner of the quarter-section constituting the location, was found by said surveyor as it had been located and monuznented with a pile of rocks by the government surveyor ; that the lines of the quarter-section were run, and stakes, two or three inches in diameter and standing a foot above the ground, were set at each corner. These monuments were placed in 1891, and some of them were found nine years later by the engineer who placed them; others were rotted away and gone. We think this evidence shows a substantial compliance with the provisions of the United States statutes requiring that “the location must be distinctly marked on the ground, so that its boundaries can be readily traced. ’ ’ (U. S. Rev. Stats., sec. 2324.) We are influenced somewhat in our consideration of the point by the fact that the notice of location which was posted and recorded described the claim by its government subdivision, the land having already been surveyed by the government, and that a government monument was still in place at one corner of the claim at the time of the location. There is nothing in