Carbon County, WY Mining Claims & Land Ownership Map
Current BLM claim data, land ownership layers, and rockhounding-ready backcountry navigation for Carbon County, WY — built for the field.
Carbon County, WY Mining Claims & Land Ownership Map
Current BLM claim data, land ownership layers, and rockhounding-ready backcountry navigation for Carbon County, WY — built for the field.
Carbon County spans a hyper-mineralized landscape in southern Wyoming, stretching from the Medicine Bow Mountains and Sierra Madre Range down through the North Platte River valley. Famed for the historic Encampment copper boom of the late 1890s and rich placer gold diggings in the Sierra Madre, the region attracts modern prospectors, detectorists, and rockhounds. Public domain lands administered by the Medicine Bow National Forest and the BLM Rawlins Field Office offer vast mountain terrain and desert basins for backcountry exploration.
Geologically, Carbon County is anchored by complex Precambrian metamorphic terranes, Proterozoic shear zones, and Tertiary igneous structures. Hydrothermal fluids injected copper-gold sulfide veins and quartz-carbonate orebodies into schists and amphibolites, giving rise to historic producers like the Ferris-Haggarty Mine. Weathering and glacio-fluvial transport concentrated placer gold across gravel benches along Cow Creek, Douglas Creek tributaries, and the Encampment River watershed.
For rockhounds, Carbon County yields diverse lapidary treasures. Public domain slopes and gravel terraces yield banded agates, moss agates, jasper, petrified wood, garnets, and copper-bearing minerals like azurite and malachite. Navigating prospecting in Carbon County demands exact land status tracking. Active unpatented lode and placer claims line proven mineral belts, interlocking with private ranches and state trust land. Utilizing a live Carbon County mining claims map enables panners and field collectors to inspect current BLM MLRS records, confirm open public domain ground, and explore safely.
2,992
Current / Not-Closed Carbon County, WY Claim Records
41,940
Historical Carbon County, WY Claims
150
Carbon County, WY Rockhound Hotspots
45,082
Total Carbon County, WY Claims & Hotspots
127
Metallic Sites
23
Non-Metallic Sites
Notable finds: Jade · Garnet · Kim · Corundum · Jasper
| Material | Sites Recorded |
|---|---|
| Jade | 15 |
| Garnet | 1 |
| Kim | 1 |
| Corundum | 1 |
| Jasper | 1 |
2,617
Lode Claims
366
Placer Claims
| Claim Type | Current Claims |
|---|---|
| Lode Claims | 2,617 (87.7%) |
| Placer Claims | 366 (12.3%) |
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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 →
1897 Encampment Copper Boom: Ed Haggarty's discovery of the Ferris-Haggarty lode in the Sierra Madre Range sparked a major copper rush, birthing Encampment and a 16-mile aerial tramway.
Cheyenne Belt Shear Zone Geology: Proterozoic tectonic collision zones formed the Cheyenne Belt, creating complex metamorphic host rocks rich in copper sulfides, gold, and platinum-group minerals.
Sierra Madre & Medicine Bow Placers: Glacial runoff and stream erosion weathered hard-rock lodes, scattering placer gold flakes and nuggets along Cow Creek, Spring Creek, and North Platte River tributaries.
Gemstone & Mineral Hotspots: Contact metamorphic zones and volcanic formations yield prized collecting materials, including banded agates, petrified wood, garnets, malachite, and azurite.
Public Domain Access: Hundreds of thousands of acres across the Medicine Bow National Forest and BLM Rawlins Field Office domain offer open access for casual panning, metal detecting, and rockhounding outside active claims.
Official Prospecting Resources for Carbon County, WY
Carbon County Clerk's Office What it is: The official county administrative and land recording portal for Carbon County (located in Rawlins, WY). Use case: Recording local unpatented placer and lode location certificates, filing annual Affidavits of Assessment Work, and searching official courthouse land title records.
BLM Rawlins Field Office What it is: The official Bureau of Land Management field office portal managing public domain surface management and mineral entry across Carbon County. Use case: Verifying open BLM public domain land availability around Encampment and the Sierra Madre Range, checking surface management regulations, and inspecting active federal mining claims.
USFS Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests What it is: The official U.S. Forest Service portal managing public national forest lands across the Medicine Bow and Sierra Madre ranges in Carbon County. Use case: Reviewing Forest Service prospecting and rockhounding rules, checking road closures, verifying forest boundaries, and submitting Notices of Intent for motorized prospecting equipment.
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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 2,992 current federal mining claim/site records and 41,940 historical claim records from BLM MLRS, plus 150 Carbon County, WY 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 Wyoming, not just Carbon County. Other Wyoming counties with a dedicated page: Fremont County, Sweetwater County, Park County and Albany County.
Carbon County Clerk's Office is Carbon County, WY'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: Carbon County Clerk'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.