Clear Creek County, CO Mining Claims & Land Ownership Map
Current BLM claim data, land ownership layers, and rockhounding-ready backcountry navigation for Clear Creek County, CO — built for the field.
Clear Creek County, CO Mining Claims & Land Ownership Map
Current BLM claim data, land ownership layers, and rockhounding-ready backcountry navigation for Clear Creek County, CO — built for the field.
Clear Creek County sits at the core of Colorado’s historical Front Range gold rush, encompassing steep mountain gulches and famous waterways like Clear Creek and Chicago Creek. Modern prospectors, metal detectorists, and rockhounds explore historic mining districts around Idaho Springs, Georgetown, Dumont, and Silver Plume. Expansive public lands within the Arapaho National Forest offer small-scale placer prospecting, metal detecting, and mineral collecting opportunities outside established claim lines.
Geologically, Clear Creek County lies squarely within the Colorado Mineral Belt. Laramide-age granitic and monzonite porphyry intrusions penetrated ancient Precambrian schist and gneiss, injecting rich pyritic quartz fissure veins carrying native gold, argentiferous galena, and sphalerite. Weathering and glacio-fluvial action eroded these hard-rock lodes, washing heavy placer gold into active stream channels, ancient bench gravels, and talus slopes. Beyond gold and silver, rockhounds collect fine specimens of fluorite, barite, pyromorphite, galena, and drusy quartz crystals from historic mine dumps and mineralized shear zones.
Succeeding in Clear Creek County gold prospecting demands precise boundary tracking. Dense clusters of active unpatented placer and lode claims line primary creek beds and mineralized slopes, intermingling with patented historic mines, private residential parcels, and highway rights-of-way. Referencing an active Clear Creek County mining claims map allows panners and detectorists to cross-reference live BLM MLRS data, verify claim status, and pinpoint open federal public domain land before heading into the canyon.
267
Current / Not-Closed Clear Creek County, CO Claim Records
4,281
Historical Clear Creek County, CO Claims
1,322
Clear Creek County, CO Rockhound Hotspots
5,870
Total Clear Creek County, CO Claims & Hotspots
1,308
Metallic Sites
14
Non-Metallic Sites
Notable finds: Feldspar · Garnet (abrasive) · Mica
Source records sometimes use broad or overlapping commodity labels; counts above preserve the underlying record classifications.
| Material | Sites Recorded |
|---|---|
| Feldspar | 4 |
| Abrasive, Garnet | 2 |
| Mica | 2 |
236
Lode Claims
30
Placer Claims
| Claim Type | Current Claims |
|---|---|
| Lode Claims | 236 (88.7%) |
| Placer Claims | 30 (11.3%) |
View Free Version · Premium Plans
Save any map area while you have cell service, then navigate active BLM mining claims, surface-management boundaries, and optional layers like elevation contours, roads, and creeks — with zero connectivity out in the field. Offline downloads are included on every paid plan. See plans below →
Official Prospecting Resources for Clear Creek County, CO
Plans
Basic
Try Staked Maps in one state.
$0/mo
Paid plans unlock full claim details, historical claims, research layers and offline tools.
Get Started FreeLocal Miner
For prospectors who mostly work one state.
$29.99/yr
Everything in Free, plus:
Adventure Miner
For prospectors who cross nearby state lines.
$49.99/yr
Everything in Free, plus:
Pro Prospector
For serious Western prospectors.
$99.99/yr
Everything in Free, plus:
Just here to rockhound?
Rockhound Enthusiast
For nationwide rockhounding research.
$29.99/yr
Gem & crystal hunters, Midwest/East users — everything in Free, plus:
Single State, Tri-State and All-West all unlock the exact same features — nothing is pay-gated between them, they differ only in how many states you get.
Paid plans renew automatically at the monthly or annual rate you choose until you cancel. Cancel anytime and keep access through the end of your paid period. See our Terms of Use.
Staked Maps isn't crowd-sourced guesswork. Current and historical claim boundaries are parsed directly from the Bureau of Land Management's Mineral & Land Records System (MLRS), which replaced the legacy LR2000 mining claim system in 2021, and kept in sync with our database on a regular schedule. Rockhound Hotspots draw from the USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS), cross-referenced by material so you can see exactly what's been found at a given site. For legal filings, always confirm current status directly with your BLM state office of record; Staked Maps is a research and navigation tool, not a substitute for the official record.
Directly from the Bureau of Land Management's official MLRS (Mineral & Land Records System) case-recordation records, synced into our database on a regular schedule — not scraped or crowd-sourced.
Staked Maps displays the status reported by BLM. Records with a case disposition of Active are labeled Active; historical records come from BLM's closed-claims dataset. These statuses are research information, not a Staked Maps legal determination of claim validity, discovery, ownership or compliance. Verify the current record through MLRS before acting on it.
Free users can search by county. Paid plans add search by claim serial number, plus each claim's full legal (aliquot) description and BLM records link.
Staked Maps currently tracks 267 current federal mining claim/site records and 4,281 historical claim records from BLM MLRS, plus 1,322 Clear Creek County, CO mineral-occurrence records derived from USGS MRDS.
A premium map layer of documented mineral occurrences, prospects and mines sourced from USGS MRDS and labeled by material where available. These records are research leads, not a directory of verified public collecting sites.
Yes — the live map covers all of Colorado, not just Clear Creek County. Other Colorado counties with a dedicated page: Teller County, Chaffee County, Gilpin County and Park County.
Clear Creek County Clerk & Recorder's Office is Clear Creek County, CO's primary office for filing and researching mining claims — see the Official Filing & Information Links section above for the direct link and more resources.
Regulatory and editorial content last reviewed against official records · Source: Clear Creek County Clerk & Recorder's Office · USGS MRDS
Information hosted on Staked Maps is compiled from publicly available data streams provided by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and relevant state geographic clearinghouses. Staked Maps accepts no liability for the content of this geospatial data, or for the consequences of any real-world exploration, land entry, or staking actions taken on the basis of the information provided via this application interface.
Staked Maps makes no warranty, expressed or implied, including the warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, nor assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the pinpoint accuracy, reliability, completeness, latency, or programmatic utility of these geospatial data layers, or for the improper interpretation of these data grids.
These mapping layers and related graphics are visual convenience aids only; they are not legal documents and must never be used as such. The data may not be used to legally determine title, mineral ownership, valid description boundaries, jurisdictional authorities, or land restrictions in place on public or private land. Natural backcountry hazards may or may not be depicted on topographies, and land users are strictly mandated to exercise caution. Federal records are dynamic and change constantly. The end-user is exclusively responsible for validating current land classifications with local BLM field offices and managing compliance accordingly.