⛏️ REAL LAND CLAIMS · MAINE
Claiming real ground, in real life
This is the long game: state land in Maine that can actually be staked, the districts geological data says are worth walking, and a record of what we find. Everything on this page is either verified from a state dataset or clearly marked as not yet true.
🚫 The single most important fact
There are no active mineral claims in Maine right now. Zero. The 4,588 on record all expired — the boom ran 1955 to 1986 and stopped. Every one we can find was given up.
The most recent claim on record is from 1986 — forty years ago.This is not a crowded field. The claimants of the rush era were oil majors and industrial firms: Utah International, Humble Oil & Refining, International Paper, Appalachian Resources. They were after uranium and industrial rock, and they left.
We are not claiming we found something nobody else knows. We are saying the ground is open, and we have the datasets to choose it deliberately instead of by guesswork.
📋 How a claim actually works
From 12 MRS ch. 201-A subchs. 3–4, §§549–550. Not a summary of a blog post — the statute.
Apply to the Director of Survey (Maine Geological Survey / Bureau of Parks and Lands). Roughly $20/year, state land only, and it expires every 30 June.
State-owned land. Parks are off limits outright — collecting there is prohibited and no permit changes that.
A claim is not a small patch. The statutory minimum is 20 acres.
Four corner posts, at least 4 ft tall and 4 in across, bearing the locator name, the permit number and the staking date. Painted trees or trimmed lines too.
A claim lets you EXPLORE. Extraction needs a lease. And the polygon does not mean access to everything inside it — only to state-owned land within it.
Registration on private or leased land kicks in above $25,000/year of exploration spend.
🗺️ Where the geology points
Scored from mineral-occurrence records by pegmatite signature. Beryllium plus lithium is the combination that matters — it is what gem pegmatite looks like in the data.
| District | Signature | Score |
|---|---|---|
| East Andover / Newry The strongest pegmatite signature we scored. Cesium means pollucite. | Beryllium, Cesium, Feldspar, Gemstone, Lithium | 15 |
| Minot / Auburn Seven separate signature sites. A long-worked gem locality. | Beryllium, Feldspar, Garnet, Gemstone, Lithium ×7 | 14 |
| Bath / Woolwich Coastal belt, different geology from the western mountains. | Beryllium, Feldspar, Gemstone, Lithium, Mica | 13 |
| Greenwood Historic quarry country. | Beryllium, Feldspar, Gemstone, Lithium, Quartz | 12 |
| West Paris The classic tourmaline town. | Beryllium, Feldspar, Garnet, Gemstone, Mica | 11 |
We deliberately publish districts, never the specific spots we work. The underlying data is public; a one-person operation's dig locations are not.
🧭 What is coming — and what is not
- Parcel map (in progress) — public parcel boundaries so a claim polygon can be described precisely instead of vaguely.
- Season field reports (in progress) — what we walked, what we found, posted whether or not it is impressive.
- Claim record (planned) — if ground is staked, the permit and corner posts get recorded and published.
- Shares of finds (planned, needs legal review) — the idea is that people who back a mission hold a real interest in what comes out. That has securities and land-law questions attached, and it does not go live until someone qualified signs off.
⚠️ What this page does not say
No claim has been staked. No land is owned. No share of anything is for sale. There is no price here because there is nothing to price yet. When any of that changes, it goes on the record first — with the permit number — and then it gets announced.