Wyoming Mining Claims Map: Current BLM Claims, Counties & Land Status

What Does a Current Wyoming Mining Claim Record Mean?

Staked Maps uses “current” for federal mining claim and site records that are not marked closed in its reconciliation process. That is not the same thing as the BLM case disposition “Active.” Wyoming's current records can carry several different BLM statuses.

Current does not mean the same thing as BLM Active. Filed, Under Review, Submitted and any other distinct BLM statuses should not be treated as legally identical to an Active record. Staked Maps reports the source status; it does not independently determine whether an individual claim contains a valid mineral discovery, satisfies all legal requirements or remains legally enforceable. Verify a specific record through BLM MLRS before relying on it.

Lode and placer records describe different forms of mineral location. Mill Sites and Tunnel Sites are separate location types under the Mining Law, not additional mineral commodities. The mix helps describe the character of recorded activity, but it does not determine the commodity being sought and does not establish whether surrounding land is open to new mineral location.

Where Are Current Wyoming Mining Claims Concentrated?

Separately, 7,068 current Wyoming records in this snapshot could not be assigned to a county because they have no usable map location in the BLM source data. They are still counted in the statewide total.

Sweetwater County currently contains the largest share of Wyoming's mapped current claim/site records, followed by Fremont County and Converse County. Together, those three counties account for 44.6% of the statewide current/not-closed record population.

Claim concentration shows where federal claim and site records are concentrated. It does not establish mineral potential, mineral ownership, public access or whether nearby ground is open to location.

What Wyoming's County Data Shows

This comparison uses each county's current Lode and Placer records only. Placer share is Placer ÷ (Lode + Placer), and lode share is Lode ÷ (Lode + Placer); Mill Site and Tunnel Site records are left out of that denominator. Only counties with at least 50 current Lode and Placer records are compared.

• Most placer-oriented: Park County, where 100.0% of 148 current Lode and Placer records are placer claims.
• Most lode-oriented: Campbell County, where 100.0% of 3,882 current Lode and Placer records are lode claims.
• Largest placer count: Big Horn County, with 2,500 current placer records.
• Largest lode count: Fremont County, with 8,162 current lode records.
• Mill Sites and Tunnel Sites: Sweetwater County holds 410 of Wyoming's 457 current Mill Site and Tunnel Site records (89.7%).

These are counts of recorded claim types, not commodities. A placer-heavy county is not necessarily a gold county, and a lode-heavy county is not necessarily a uranium or metals county. County figures include only records that could be placed in a county; 7,068 current records have no usable map location and are not included.

Current and Historical Claims Answer Different Questions

Current/not-closed records help identify federal mining claim and site records that have not been marked closed in Staked Maps' reconciliation process. Historical/closed records show earlier recorded claim activity.

Historical activity can be useful research context because it shows where claim activity occurred in the past. It does not prove that mineral rights remain available, that the land is open to entry, that the public has access or that a historical mine or claim location is safe to enter.

Likewise, the absence of a current claim polygon does not prove that the ground is open to new claim location.

Why Federal Mineral Estate Is Larger Than BLM Surface Land in Wyoming

The Bureau of Land Management reports managing approximately 18.4 million acres of public surface land and approximately 42.9 million acres of federal mineral estate in Wyoming (BLM, What We Manage: Wyoming). Those numbers are different because surface ownership and mineral ownership are not always the same.

In a split-estate situation, the surface may be privately owned while some or all subsurface mineral rights remain federally owned. BLM specifically documents private-surface/federal-mineral split estate associated with lands patented under laws including the Stock Raising Homestead Act.

That means a surface-management map alone cannot establish who owns the minerals beneath a parcel. It also does not establish whether federal minerals are open to mining-claim location.

Wyoming State Trust Land Is Not BLM Public Land

Wyoming state trust land is administered by the Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments (OSLI), not by the Bureau of Land Management. Wyoming received approximately 4.2 million acres of trust land at statehood, and OSLI is required by law to manage state trust lands to produce income to support public schools and other public institutions.

Public recreational use of state trust land is subject to Wyoming's own rules, and the land must be legally accessible. OSLI states that off-road vehicle use, overnight camping and open fires are prohibited on state trust lands, and activities outside the scope of its general recreation rules must be authorized under a temporary use permit or special use lease.

Mineral development on Wyoming state trust land also uses Wyoming's state mineral-leasing system. BLM federal mining-claim procedures should not be assumed to apply to state mineral estate.

If No Current Claim Appears, Is the Land Open to Staking?

No.

The absence of a current mining-claim record answers only one part of the land-status question. Before treating an area as potentially open to mineral entry, research at least:

• mineral ownership
• surface ownership and managing agency
• federal withdrawals or segregations
• special designations and closures
• existing rights
• state, tribal or private ownership
• applicable BLM and land-management records
• access restrictions

A blank area on Staked Maps is not a legal determination that land is open, unclaimed, publicly accessible or available for prospecting. For how owning minerals differs from holding a claim, see Mineral Rights vs. Mining Claims.

A Wyoming Mining-Claim Map Does Not Show Every Kind of Mineral Development

Wyoming has major coal, oil and gas, uranium, bentonite, trona and other mineral resources. Not every form of mineral development is represented by a federal mining-claim polygon. Different commodities and land interests can be administered through leasing, permitting or other federal and state systems.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Land Quality Division regulates permitting, licensing and reclamation for surface and underground mine facilities within its jurisdiction. It does not replace BLM's federal mining-claim record system.

For that reason, use the Staked Maps claim layer for mining-claim research, not as a statewide inventory of every mine, mineral lease, mineral right or permitted mineral operation.

Wyoming's Mineral Geography Is More Than a Gold Story

Wyoming's modern mineral geography includes major uranium districts as well as precious metals, base metals, industrial minerals and gemstones. The Wyoming State Geological Survey documents uranium deposits in areas including the Powder River, Great Divide, Wind River and Shirley basins, along with additional districts elsewhere in the state.

Modern Wyoming uranium production uses in-situ recovery rather than conventional hard-rock mining; WSGS reports that it has been the only uranium extraction method used in the state since 1993.

Mining-claim type does not identify commodity. A Lode or Placer record should not be labeled a “uranium claim,” “gold claim” or any other commodity-specific claim unless the underlying source record independently supports that conclusion.

South Pass and Wyoming's Historic Gold Geography

Wyoming's first major gold rush followed the 1867 discovery of bedrock-hosted gold associated with the Carissa lode. The Wyoming State Geological Survey identifies the South Pass-Atlantic City and Lewiston districts as historic areas containing both lode and placer gold deposits.

This history is useful research context, but historic mining districts are not current land-status boundaries. Historical mining activity does not establish current claim ownership, public access, mineral ownership or whether ground is presently open to mineral entry.

Wyoming Documented Mineral Occurrences

Staked Maps currently maps 999 Wyoming mineral-occurrence, prospect and mine records derived from Wyoming State Geological Survey data. These records are research leads, not a directory of verified public collecting sites.

These two groups follow the classification Staked Maps applied when building this layer from WSGS data: a record is grouped as non-metallic / gem-lapidary if WSGS flags any gem or lapidary material there, and as metallic otherwise. They are not a perfect commodity taxonomy. In the data checked September 24, 2026, 57 of the 254 records in the non-metallic / gem-lapidary group also flag a metal, including 31 that list gold.

Leading Wyoming Gem and Lapidary Materials

Counts below are records that list each material (data checked September 24, 2026). A record can list more than one material, so the rows do not add up to 254.

“Other Gemstones” is an unspecified gem category, while “Lapidary Material” is a broader cutting-and-polishing material category. These labels are useful for finding source records but do not identify a specific mineral species.

Mineral-occurrence records do not establish public access, collecting permission, mineral ownership, the absence of a mining claim or whether land is open to mineral entry.

Who Handles Mining Claims, Land Status and Mining Regulation in Wyoming?

Different records answer different questions. A BLM mining-claim record does not substitute for a title search, and a surface-management layer does not establish mineral ownership.

Official Wyoming Mining and Land Research Resources

• Bureau of Land Management, Wyoming: federal mining claims, MLRS, federal mineral estate, land status and BLM office information.
• Wyoming Office of State Lands and Investments: state trust land, state surface ownership, state mineral leasing and access rules.
• Wyoming State Geological Survey: geology, mineral resources, uranium, metals, gemstones and historic mining districts.
• Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality, Land Quality Division: mining and reclamation permits and active permitted mine information.
• U.S. Forest Service: surface-management requirements and restrictions on National Forest System lands.

How Staked Maps Builds the Wyoming Mining Claims Map

Staked Maps processes publicly available Bureau of Land Management claim records and synchronizes them into a map designed for field research. It is not a substitute for the official record.

• Current/not-closed records: Records in Staked Maps' current dataset that have not been marked closed through the reconciliation process. Synced from BLM's MLRS/NLSDB ArcGIS service through nightly incremental sync plus periodic full reconciliation.
• BLM disposition: Retained separately as source data from BLM and may include Active, Filed, Under Review, Submitted or other BLM statuses present in the current source data. BLM case-type values are normalized into Lode, Placer, Mill Site and Tunnel Site.
• Historical claims: Sourced from BLM's historical/closed-claims layer. Staked Maps does not represent its local historical cache as a complete archival mirror of every BLM record.
• Sync schedule: Nightly incremental sync, a weekly full reconciliation, and a monthly cross-check against BLM's closed-claims layer.
• Claim geometry: Claim polygons are derived from legal land descriptions under the Public Land Survey System. Some source records can be represented at coarser aliquot or section-level resolution rather than as surveyed claim footprints. Where BLM supplies no polygon, Staked Maps draws an approximate rectangle from the record's legal description; this includes Wyoming records whose BLM range is written in a nonstandard form (for example “0102W” for Range 102 West), which Staked Maps places using BLM's own PLSS township boundaries.
• Counties: County assignment is a spatial match against U.S. Census TIGER/Line county boundaries, not a county field supplied directly by BLM. 7,068 Wyoming current records have no usable map location in the BLM source data yet, so they cannot be assigned to a county; they are still counted in statewide totals.
• Rockhound / mineral data: Sourced from Wyoming State Geological Survey. Staked Maps keeps 999 of WSGS's mineral records: those flagging a metal or a gem/lapidary material, excluding industrial and energy commodities such as coal, trona, bentonite and aggregate. These are occurrence, prospect and mine research records, not verified public collecting sites.
• Land / PLSS: Public Land Survey System and surface-management research layers use the site's existing published government GIS sources.
• Limitations: Staked Maps does not establish legal claim validity, mineral ownership, surface-access rights, title, collecting permission or whether land is open to mineral entry. Verify the applicable official records before relying on a location.

A Practical Wyoming Mining-Claim Research Workflow

1. Identify the Wyoming area you want to research.
2. Review current claim/site records and BLM status.
3. Compare claim types, historical records and mineral-occurrence context where useful.
4. Determine the surface manager and investigate mineral ownership separately.
5. Check withdrawals, special designations, state trust land and other restrictions that may affect mineral entry or access.
6. Verify the applicable BLM, state, county or land-management record before relying on the result.

Staked Maps helps bring map-based research layers together. It is not a legal determination, title search, proof that land is open or proof that land is unclaimed.

What Premium Adds to Your Wyoming Map

• Historical Claims. See where mining activity existed before today's current records.
• Full Claim Details. Serial number, legal location and direct BLM-record access where available.
• Research Layers. PLSS, roads/trails, waterways and Wyoming mineral occurrences.
• Offline Maps. Save your Wyoming research before losing cell service.
• Field Tools. Directions, custom pins, measurements and claim-drafting tools.

Single State unlocks all premium features for Wyoming for $29.99/year.