ABSTRACT
From the beginning, there was considerable uncertainty concerning the role the executive branch of the federal government would play in administering the Mining Law. Born in an age when the principal thrust of federal land policy was disposal and federal land regulatory machinery was nearly nonexistent, the Mining Law contemplated regulation and administration mostly by the miners themselves and by state and local governments. Though such regulation was made subservient to federal law, the only direct federal executive role provided for in the statute was played by the federal Supervisor of Surveys in passing on patent applications. (With the creation of the Bureau of Land Management in 1946, that function came to be assumed by the bureau. 1 )
