Who owns the west?

Canyon Resources Co

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Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries are a few of 92,125 beneficiaries of a 131-year-old federal mining law that gives away precious metals, minerals, and even the title to the land itself for less than $10 an acre. Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries own the minerals under an estimated 5,598 acres of claimed land, and have submitted mining plans and notices that encompass 4,688 acres of BLM-managed land, not including the acreages of mines they may operate on Forest Service land. giving Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries more total land holdings (claims and patents) than over 99.5% of all other mining interests.

Headquarters

14142 Denver West Pkwy., Ste. 250
Golden, CO 80401

Subsidiaries Include

CR Briggs Corp (100%)
Kendall Venture (100%)

Partners Include

Euro-Franco Nevada Mining Corporation

Information on subsidiaries and parent companies shown here represents our best estimate of corporate structure at the time of this website release, and are drawn from various publicly available sources. Please report any noted omissions and errors to EWG with a credible source or citation. Thank you.

Overview of Ownership

Statistics on this page include the ownership of subsidiaries. View this page without subsidiary information included.

 ClaimsPatentsMining Plans & Notices
Number321 0 8
Estimated Acreage5,598 0 4,688
States
11111111
11111111
11111111

Find these features on a map.

Source: EWG analysis of US BLM data.

Examples of Mines

These mines are owned by Canyon Resources Co, its subsidiaries, or its parent company.

Name of MineLocation of MineMine StatusMetal MinedMap Link
Briggs Gold MineInyo County, CAOpenGoldmap
Kendall MineFergus County, MTClosedGold and Silvermap

Source: EWG analysis.

 

Claims

Like all U.S. claimholders, Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries acquired ownership of precious metals and minerals on U.S. public land for about $2 per acre, and maintains possession of the claim with a small per-acre fee, typically $5 each year. Canyon Resources Co pays no royalties to the federal government for metals and minerals mined from this land.

For Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries:

Claims by State.

StateNumber of ClaimsEstimated AcreageDate(s)
California 3215,5981931 - 1992
U.S. Total 3215,5981931 - 1992

Find these features on the map.

Source: EWG analysis of US BLM data.


Mining Plans & Notices on BLM Land

Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries are some of the 3,323 mine operators on U.S. BLM lands with mining plans and notices listed as currently active in government records, operating under laws that allow mining interests to extract and sell precious metals and minerals previously held by the public. Canyon Resources Co may also operate mines on Forest Service lands, which are not contained in the LR2000 database that is the backbone of this website. Because the government often fails to promptly close out records for mines no longer active, active mining may be completed for some of the operations represented by plans and notices in this website. But regardless of the status of mining operations on a particular site, filings of plans and notices are indicative of mining on the property - whether past, present, or planned. Mining operations led by Canyon Resources Co may well have left behind permanent pollution. In 2001 mines generated 45 percent of all pollution in EPA's Toxic Release Reporting system while accounting for just 0.36 percent of all industrial facilities.

For Canyon Resources Co and its subsidiaries:

Plans and Notices on BLM land by State.

StateNumber of Plans and Notices on BLM landEstimated AcreageDate(s)
California 43,4961995 - 1996
Montana 31,1921988 - 1989
Nevada 101986
U.S. Total 84,6881986 - 1996

Find these features on the map.

Source: EWG analysis of US BLM data.



Source: EWG analysis of Bureau of Land Management's Land and Mineral Records 2000 (LR2000) data system. For claims, acreages are estimated based on maximum allowable size of claims. For patents, acreages are taken directly from the LR2000 database where available, and are estimated based on maximum allowable size of claim that preceded the patent where acreages are not noted in LR2000. All notices are assumed to be five acres in size, and the size of plans are calculated directly as the size of the land represented by the legal land description in the LR2000 database. The acreages we estimate through these methods would tend to overestimate the actual amount. We welcome corrections here, and would welcome a federal data management system that included the acreages involved in these important federal land transactions.