Hendricks v. Feather River Canal Co.

CHIPMAN, C.

This appeal is from the judgment on the judgment-roll. Plaintiff brought the action to quiet his title to lot 1 of the northeast quarter and lots 2 and 3 of the southeast quarter of section 13, township 19 north, range 3 east, in Butte County, and bounded on the west and northwest by Feather River. Defendants disclaim any interest in the designated lots named, but deny that they are bounded on the west or northwest by the Feather River; aver ownership to a strip of land, being about thirty acres, lying westward of said lots and between them and the Feather River, which, it is averred,

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the-defendants acquired as a placer mining claim. Plaintiff claims the river as his boundary-line, and defendants claim that the boundary is a meander-line, surveyed originally by courses and distances, which, it is contended, left the strip of land in question unoccupied and subject to entry.

The court found that the United States caused to be surveyed, in 1854 and 1855, certain lands in. Butte County, of which the land the subject of the action was a part; that the courses and distances and lines run of the survey were noted in the field-book which was returned to the surveyor-general, who caused a description of the land surveyed to be made out and a plat to be made of the townships and fractional parts of townships contained in the lands surveyed, describing the subdivisions thereof and the marks and corners, and recorded said plat in books kept for that purpose in said surveyor-general’s office; that a portion of said tract so surveyed and platted consisted of the fractional part of said section 13; in the findings are given the field-notes, showing the courses and distances and lines run affecting fractional section 13, and the court finds that said fractional part of said section is the land described in the complaint, and was described and platted by the surveyor-general by the same description as in plaintiff’s complaint; that in 1880 a patent was issued to the Central Pacific Railroad Company by the same description, and by the same description plaintiff has title by mesne conveyances; “that the meander-line described in said field-notes does not in fact follow the meander-line of the left bank of said river, but runs easterly thereof at distances varying from a point to several hundred feet, and in fact leaves about thirty acres between it and the said meander-line of the left bank of the river;’? that “said lots for over forty years have been known to be valuable for the minerals contained therein, and are now worth for that purpose over one hundred dollars per acre.” The court also finds that certain named defendants were qualified mine locators, and made a mineral location of the said strip of land between the said meander-line of Feather River and the left bank of said river, containing about thirty acres, but that at the time of said location the “said land was not vacant, unexplored public land, and was not open for exploration or purchase.” Among the conclusions of law, the court found “that the Feather River is the